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Submission + - Amazon hit by extensive fraud with hackers siphoning merchant funds (mercurynews.com)

schwit1 writes: “Amazon said it was still investigating the compromised accounts and believed that hackers managed to change details of accounts on the Seller Central platform to their own at Barclays and Prepay Technologies, which is partly owned by Mastercard, according to the filing.”

No mention of how much was stolen, and it could be that not even Amazon knows.

Submission + - Quantum Computer not ready to break public key encryption for 10 years. (theregister.co.uk)

physburn writes: The register reports, Richard Evers, cryptographer for a Canadian security biz called Kryptera, argues that media coverage and corporate pronouncements about quantum computing have left people with the impression that current encryption algorithms will soon become obsolete. But they will not be ready for at least 10 years.

Submission + - Not Exercising Worse For Your Health Than Smoking, Diabetes and Heart Disease (cnn.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: We've all heard exercise helps you live longer. But a new study goes one step further, finding that a sedentary lifestyle is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease. Researchers retrospectively studied 122,007 patients who underwent exercise treadmill testing at Cleveland Clinic between January 1, 1991 and December 31, 2014 to measure all-cause mortality relating to the benefits of exercise and fitness. Those with the lowest exercise rate accounted for 12% of the participants. Dr. Wael Jaber, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic and senior author of the study, said the other big revelation from the research is that fitness leads to longer life, with no limit to the benefit of aerobic exercise. Researchers have always been concerned that "ultra" exercisers might be at a higher risk of death, but the study found that not to be the case. "There is no level of exercise or fitness that exposes you to risk," he said. "We can see from the study that the ultra-fit still have lower mortality."

Submission + - Either This Data is Incorrect or These Physicists Just Changed the World (vice.com)

dmoberhaus writes: Last month, two Indian physicists posted a paper to arxiv claiming to have demonstrated superconductivity at room temperature. If this paper is legitimate, it would represent a breakthrough in a problem that has existed for superconductivity for 100 years. Understandably, the paper shook the physics world, but when researchers started digging into the data they noticed something wasn't quite right--the noise patterns in two independent measurements exactly correlated, which is basically impossible in a random system. The Indian researchers are doubled down on their data, and things only got weirder from there. This is a look inside the biggest drama to happen in physics in nearly a decade.

Submission + - Fewer than half of young Americans are positive about capitalism (cnbc.com)

gollum123 writes: According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively. "This represents a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68 percent viewed it positively," notes Gallup, which defines young Americans as those aged 18 to 29. While young people have a less upbeat view on capitalism, "older Americans have been consistently more positive about capitalism than socialism," Gallup reports. Of those between 30 and 49 years old, 58 percent have a positive view of capitalism and 41 percent have a positive view of socialism. Of those aged 50 to 64, 60 percent have a positive view of capitalism and 30 percent have a positive view of socialism. "Socialism clearly sounds better as a concept to young people than to those who are older, as it has over the past eight years," Gallup notes. "Whether the appeal of socialism to young adults is a standard function of idealism at that age that dissipates as one grows older, or will turn out to be a more permanent part of the political beliefs held by the cohort of millennials who have come of age over the past decade, remains to be seen."

Submission + - Google Must End Its Silence About Censored Search in China (vortex.com) 1

Lauren Weinstein writes: While ever more purported details regarding this alleged effort have been leaking to the public, Google itself has apparently responded to the massive barrage of related inquiries only with the “non-denial denial” that they will not comment on speculation regarding their future plans.

This radio silence has seemingly extended to inside Google as well, where reportedly Google executives have yet to issue a company-wide explanation to the Google workforce, which includes many Googlers who are very concerned and upset about these reports.

Submission + - Those Blue LEDs That We All Love? Stop Looking At Them

Isao writes: It (apparently) has been known that blue light damages eyes and accelerates macular degeneration. A new article on phys.org may have identified how this happens.

It seems that unlike other light colors, blue causes a necessary molecule (retinal) to permanently kill photoreceptor cells. From the article: "The researcher found that a molecule called alpha tocoferol, a Vitamin E derivative and a natural antioxidant in the eye and body, stops the cells from dying. However, as a person ages or the immune system is suppressed, people lose the ability to fight against the attack by retinal and blue light."

The authors will continue their research and recommend filtering and blue light reduction in the meantime.

Submission + - SPAM: The Problem With Programming and How To Fix It 1

theodp writes: Programming today," begins Jonathan Edwards' The problem with programming and how to fix it, "is exactly what you'd expect to get by paying an isolated subculture of nerdy young men to entertain themselves for fifty years. You get a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Rubik's Cube, elaborated a thousand-fold." To be a 'full stack' developer, Edwards laments, one must master the content of something like a hundred thousand pages of documentation. "Isn't the solution to design technology that doesn't require a PhD?" he asks. "What of the #CSForAll movement? I have mixed feelings. The name itself betrays confusion — want we really want is #ProgrammingForAll. Computer science is not a prerequisite for most programming, and may in fact be more of a barrier to many. The confusion of computer science with programming is actually part of the problem, which seems invisible to this movement." It wasn't always this way, Edwards notes, citing spreadsheets, HyperCard, and the many incarnations of Basic as examples of how programming technology can be vastly easier and more accessible. "Unfortunately application programming got trampled in the internet gold rush," Edwards explains. "Suddenly all that mattered was building large-scale systems as fast as possible, and money was no object, so the focus shifted to 'rock star' programmers and the sophisticated high-powered tools they preferred. As a result the internet age has seen an exponential increase in the complexity of programming, as well as its exclusivity. It is long past time to return to designing tools not just for rock stars at Google but the vast majority of programmers and laypeople with simple small-scale problems. We've done it before so we can do it again, even better this time."

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