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Submission + - Is IT work getting more stressful, or is it the Millennials? (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: A survey of IT professionals that has been conducted in each of the last four years is showing an increase in IT work stress levels. It's a small survey, just over 200 IT workers, and it doesn't account for the age of the respondents. But some are asking whether Millennials, those ages 18 to 34, are pushing up stress levels either as IT workers or end users. The reason Millennials may be less able to handle stress is that they interact with others in person far less than other generations do, since most of their social interactions have been through Internet-based, arms-length contact, said Billie Blair, who holds a doctorate in organizational psychology. This generation has also been protected from many real-life situations by their parents, "so the workplace tends to be more stressful for them than for others," she said. Others are wondering if Millennials are more demanding of IT workers. Millennials are also expert users, and "are no longer in awe of technology specialists and therefore demand higher service levels," said Mitch Ellis, managing director of executive search firm Sanford Rose Associates in St. Louis.

Comment Re:Who says it succeeded? (Score 1) 469

by Gazzonyx (#49635883) Attached to: Why Was Linux the Kernel That Succeeded?
So far as I know, by default, Linux still over allocates up to 50% of total RAM (not 50% of available memory if you count virtual memory). This parameter can be tuned or set via sysctl. But, yeah, I love Linux, but it's got memory management issues that I don't have on other operating systems. I've found I can usually tune around them somewhat.

Although I've never found a way to have it do what I'd really like and dedicate lots of memory for buffers when writing large files. For instance, when I'm writing a disk image via dd to a reasonably fast RAID array and I've got 32 GB of RAM, I wish I could tell the kernel to not waste the RAM caching the pages I'm writing (they'll be evacuated when memory exhausts, and if I decide to compress the image, the 'end' of the file that's cached will be evacuated to make room for the stuff I've compressed), but rather to dedicate them to the buffer so that once the disk I'm reading is at the slow end of the disk, my RAID array isn't just sitting idle waiting on IO.

Comment Re:Who says it succeeded? (Score 1) 469

by Gazzonyx (#49635845) Attached to: Why Was Linux the Kernel That Succeeded?

What you describe /is/ swapping, which makes it odd since you started with "if you are not using swap". Care to elaborate on what exactly you did, under what circumstances?

My description is accurate. I have just been normally using the computer. Even without any swap, the HDD goes "krrrrrr..." and the system becomes very unresponsive when you begin to run out of memory. You can easily try it yourself, as it is reproducible every time.

It seems to throw out program pages from memory if it knows that they are disk-backed. It seems to be hard to trigger the OOM killer in this condition as well, even though it should happen.

I believe these memory problems can be somewhat mitigated by some hand tuning of the vm parameters "swappiness" and "vfs_cache_pressure". Unfortunately I don't have the time at the moment to setup a good test, but they're worth a shot if you find yourself in that situation in the future. Ref: https://www.suse.com/documenta...

Submission + - Let's help make Krita "faster than Photoshop" (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by xophos
xophos writes: The Krita foundation, makers of the open source paint program Krita has started a Kickstarter campaign to make it even more awesome. Main goals for this years campaign are drawing speed on high resolution canvasses with large brushes, and the long planned animation feature.

Submission + - Putting keys in freezer could prevent car break-ins (wcnc.com) 1

Submitted by turkeydance
turkeydance writes: If you have a car with a hands-free key fob, you could become the target of a break-in tactic that you probably didn't know was possible. AAA Carolinas' Dave Yelverton says this type of key fob typically unlocks a car if it's within about 30 centimeters.

"Your car is continually trying to reach out and touch this key," Yelverton said. "And when it finds the key, you can open the door without touching the car without using the key. You can just leave it in your pocket."

But there are break-in cases across the country, where a power amplifier device may have been used to unlock the cars. Yelverton says the amplifier would take that signal from the car and fire it out as far as 100 meters.

Submission + - Mysterious X-rays at the center of the galaxy

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The x-ray space telescope NuSTAR has detected high energy x-rays at the center of the Milky Way coming from no obvious source.

In and of themselves, X-rays from the galactic center aren't unusual. But the X-rays NuSTAR detects don't seem to be associated with structures already known to exist. For example, a supernova remnant named Sgr A East emits low-energy X-rays but not high-energy X-rays. The high-energy blotch doesn't correlate with structures seen in radio images either, such as the dust and gas clouds of Sgr A West that are falling toward the supermassive black hole.

Instead, Perez and her colleagues propose that thousands of stellar corpses could be responsible for the high-energy X-rays: massive (and still-growing) white dwarfs, spun-up pulsars, or black holes or neutrons stars feeding on low-mass companion stars.

All of their proposed solutions, however, have serious problems explaining all of the data.

Submission + - Report: Microsoft Considering Salesforce Acquisition (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bloomberg reports that Microsoft is considering making a bid for CRM and cloud software company Salesforce, after hearing that Salesforce was entertaining an offer from another company. No talks are underway, but Salesforce has started working with investment banks to figure out how it wants to respond to such offers. Salesforce has a market value of about $50 billion, so any sort of acquisition would be a huge business deal.

Submission + - Google Can't Ignore The Android Update Problem Any Longer (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An editorial at Tom's Hardware makes the case that Google's Android fragmentation problem has gotten too big to ignore any longer. Android 5.0 Lollipop and its successor 5.1 have seen very low adoption rates — 9.0% and 0.7% respectively. Almost 40% of users are still on KitKat. 6% lag far behind on Gingerbread and Froyo. The article points out that even Microsoft is now making efforts to both streamline Windows upgrades and adapt Android (and iOS) apps to run on Windows. If Google doesn't adapt, "it risks having users (slowly but surely) switch to more secure platforms that do give them updates in a timely manner. And if users want those platforms, OEMs will have no choice but to switch to them too, leaving Google with less and less Android adoption." The author also says OEMs and carriers can no longer be trusted to handle operating system updates, because they've proven themselves quite incapable of doing so in a reasonable manner.

Submission + - Rombertik strikes! In 10 seconds, this computer will self-destruct (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: Viruses can be a serious problem and they take myriad forms. Viruses have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, particularly in the methods used to try to evade detection. Now Cisco's Talos security researchers have discovered the Rombertik which goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid analysis.

Researchers managed to reverse-engineer the virus and found "multiple layers of obfuscation and anti-analysis functionality". One sample was found to include code that would destroy the MBR of the host computer if analysis or debugging is attempted.

The effects of a Rombertik can be devastating. Left to its own devices, the malware will sit happily in the background gathering information about online activity, collecting user credentials and feed them back to a remote server. Writing on the Cisco blog, Ben Baker and Alex Chiu explain that while Rombertik's method of propagation — usually through emails and social networks — is nothing out of the ordinary, the way it operates is something from a different league.

Submission + - Why Was Linux The Kernel That Succeeded? (thevarguy.com) 2

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: One of the most puzzling questions about the history of free and open source software is this: Why did Linux succeed so spectacularly, whereas similar attempts to build a free or open source, Unix-like operating system kernel met with considerably less success? Christopher Tozzi has rounded up some theories, focusing specifically on kernels, not complete operating systems. These theories take a detailed look at the decentralized development structure, pragmatic approach to things, and the rich developer community, all of which worked in favor of Linux.

Submission + - Appeals Judge Calls Prenda an "Ingenuous Crooked Extortionate Operation"

Submitted by ktetch-pirate
ktetch-pirate writes: Today was the long-awaited appeals court hearing in the ongoing Prenda copyright troll saga. Almost exactly two years after Judge Otis Wright went sci-fi on Prenda and its principles, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held an appeals hearing requested by Prenda on the sanctions, and it was not a pretty day for Prenda. Highlights included Senior Judge Pregerson calling Prenda's operation an "Ingenuous Crooked Extortionate Operation" after describing in detail how they operate.

Prenda also astonished the judges by welcoming the idea of a criminal contempt hearing, which Legal blog Popehat thinks is likely to happen, on top of the sanctions being sustained.

Submission + - Congressional liberals, conservatives unite against NSA spying (politico.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: In an ornate room on the first floor of the Capitol, some of the most liberal members of Congress met for lunch on Thursday with nearly a dozen stalwart conservatives who’ve repeatedly taken on their own leadership for being too soft.

The agenda consisted of a single topic, perhaps the only one that would bring together such ideologically divergent politicians in Washington at this moment: their shared disdain for the PATRIOT Act.

With key provisions of the controversial post-9/11 law set to expire at the end of the month, including authority for the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, critics in both parties are preparing to strike. Among those on hand for the meeting were Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan, a card-carrying ACLU member from the liberal mecca of Madison, Wisconsin, and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, a tea party adherent from Kentucky.

Along with Pocan and Massie, the Thursday gathering drew Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.). The lawmakers, many of them privacy zealots with libertarian leanings, discussed the USA Freedom Act, bipartisan legislation that would rein in the bulk collection of telephone records and reauthorize expiring anti-terror surveillance provisions in the PATRIOT Act.

“We are definitely making it a bipartisan effort because we believe there are people on both sides of the aisle who are interested in protecting the rights of Americans,” Amash said.

Democrats and libertarian-minded Republicans want changes that go beyond what’s currently on the table, but it’s unclear whether they have the numbers. Massie and Amash are key players in a growing conservative bloc of the Republican caucus that in the past has forced Boehner and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to alter legislation that didn’t pass conservative muster.

“People are going to have to make a decision if there are enough real reforms in there to make it worth reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act,” Massie said. “I don’t think the reforms are significant enough.”

“The onus is really on [Republican and Democratic leaders] to have something in place if this is going to run out and they need to reauthorize something,” the Republican added. “We’re trying to figure out how to get a better, stronger [bill] that protects privacy rights.”

Submission + - The Programming Talent Myth

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Jake Edge writes at LWN.net that there is a myth that programming skill is somehow distributed on a U-shaped curve and that people either "suck at programming" or that they "rock at programming", without leaving any room for those in between. Everyone is either an amazing programmer or "a worthless use of a seat" which doesn't make much sense. If you could measure programming ability somehow, its curve would look like the normal distribution. According to Edge this belief that programming ability fits into a bi-modal distribution is both "dangerous and a myth". "This myth sets up a world where you can only program if you are a rock star or a ninja. It is actively harmful in that is keeping people from learning programming, driving people out of programming, and it is preventing most of the growth and the improvement we'd like to see." If the only options are to be amazing or terrible, it leads people to believe they must be passionate about their career, that they must think about programming every waking moment of their life. If they take their eye off the ball even for a minute, they will slide right from amazing to terrible again leading people to be working crazy hours at work, to be constantly studying programming topics on their own time, and so on.

The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, says Edge, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned. Programming isn't even one thing, though people talk about it as if it were; it requires all sorts of skills and coding is just a small part of that. Things like design, communication, writing, and debugging are needed. If we embrace this idea that "it's cool to be okay at these skills"—that being average is fine—it will make programming less intimidating for newcomers. If the bar for success is set "at okay, rather than exceptional", the bar seems a lot easier to clear for those new to the community. According to Edge the tech industry is rife with sexism, racism, homophobia, and discrimination and although it is a multi-faceted problem, the talent myth is part of the problem. "In our industry, we recast the talent myth as "the myth of the brilliant asshole", says Jacob Kaplan-Moss. "This is the "10x programmer" who is so good at his job that people have to work with him even though his behavior is toxic. In reality, given the normal distribution, it's likely that these people aren't actually exceptional, but even if you grant that they are, how many developers does a 10x programmer have to drive away before it is a wash?"

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