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Submission + - How to Starve Big Tech (americanthinker.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: Ditch Windows and Mac operating systems in favor of Linux... On the web browser front, if you're using Google Chrome or Apple Safari, you should know that your online activity is being tracked, recorded, and sold to thousands of data brokers... A good alternative is the Brave browser... For the love of God, stop using Google search and Gmail. Good alternatives are DuckDuckGo and ProtonMail.

Submission + - SPAM: TSMC founder says China's semiconductor industry still five years behind. 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “Mainland China has given out subsidies to the tune of tens of billions of US dollars over the past 20 years but it is still five years behind TSMC,” Chang said. “Its logic chip design capability is still one to two years behind the US and Taiwan. The mainland is still not yet a competitor.”

In his speech, Chang also took a swipe at US chip giant Intel, describing its recent decision to enter the contract chip making market as “very ironic” because it turned down an opportunity to invest in TSMC more than three decades ago. Contract chip makers like TSMC typically take orders from so-called fabless chip makers like Qualcomm, which design their products but outsource the manufacturing.

Chang said he was rejected by Intel when he approached it for funding in 1985. “In the past, Intel was the alpha sneering at us and thought that we would never get big,” he said. “They never thought the business of [outsourced] wafer fabrication would become so important today.”

Chang said the US is also at a disadvantage compared with Taiwan because it lacks engineers dedicated to the semiconductor manufacturing sector, adding that the “US level of dedication to manufacturing was absolutely no match for that of Taiwan”.

“What I need right now are capable and dedicated engineers, technicians and operators. And they have to be willing to throw themselves into manufacturing,” he said. “In the US, doing manufacturing isn’t popular. It hasn’t been popular for decades.”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Faulty software lands postmasters and postmistresses in prison. (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Martin S.
Martin S. writes: Today the UK will Court of Appeal will issue its ruling on A group of 42 sub-postmasters and postmistresses will learn later whether convictions for stealing money will be quashed amid a Post Office IT scandal.

This case has been rumbling on for over a decade Post Office scandal: What the Horizon saga is all about

As a software geek, the part I find most troubling is that blind faith that those in authority placed in the software without proper accounting. Accounting systems and Software are deterministic, well they should be. IFF the system/software worked correctly this missing money must have shown up somewhere. Software defects are always traceable. It might be expensive and time consuming but persistence will win in the end. Somebody somewhere is responsible for this and defacto framing of these people is criminal in principle, if not in law.

Submission + - Autopilot lie exposed by consumer reports. (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Rei_is_a_dumbass
Rei_is_a_dumbass writes: Elon Musk has tweeted that "data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled." Tesla defenders also insisted that Autopilot couldn't have been active because the technology doesn't operate unless someone is in the driver's seat. Consumer Reports decided to test this latter claim by seeing if it could get Autopilot to activate without anyone in the driver's seat.

It turned out not to be very difficult.

Submission + - Details of 200 million Americans leak from Trump campaign (theguardian.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: British Channel 4 News was leaked a copy of a vast election database it says was used by the Trump campaign in 2016. Comprising the records of 198 million Americans, and containing details about their domestic and economic status acquired from market research firms, the investigation claimed voters were segmented into eight categories. One was marked “deterrence”. Those placed in the special category – voters thought likely to vote for Clinton or not at all – were disproportionately black. The effort is said to have been devised in part by Cambridge Analytica, the notorious election consultant that ceased trading last year following revelations that it used dirty tricks to help win elections around the world and had gained unauthorised access to tens of millions of Facebook profiles.

Submission + - Slashdot Cowardly Disables Anonymous Coward (slashdot.org) 8

Submitted by dark.nebulae
dark.nebulae writes: Apparently Slashdot has disabled Anonymous Coward postings, but they have been cowards about it by not informing anyone about it.

Perhaps one of the Slashdot Editors can grow a backbone and actually tell us wtf is going on...

Submission + - SPAM: Silicon Valley's Psychopath Problem 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: According to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist — the universally accepted diagnostic tool used to assess this disorder — a psychopathic personality includes traits such as a grandiose sense of self-worth, a lack of remorse or guilt, poor behavioral controls, pathological lying and a lack of empathy.

These attributes aren’t just present “but celebrated in Silicon Valley,” says Gavet, who once held the position of executive vice-president of global operations for Priceline Group, among other roles.

Research by the FBI found that companies managed by psychopaths tend to have decreased productivity and low employee morale. In fact, Silicon Valley’s psychopathic traits “trickle down through entire organizations,” says Gavet. “In effect creating psychopathic companies.”

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is being probed by the New York state attorney general over allegations of self-dealing.NY Post composite/Mike Guillen
This is enabled by an “infantilized culture” at many start-up companies, where employees become accustomed to working in “hyper-privileged bubbles where their every whim is catered to and every need anticipated,” she writes.

The patron saint of Big Tech douches, the one who inspired an entire generation of start-up entrepreneurs to put their worst face forward, was late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. He disliked wearing shoes (or showering), preferred parking in handicapped parking spots and once motivated employees by calling them “f–king d–kless assholes.”

“His legacy has cultivated an indelible association between being a jerk and a genius,” writes Gavet. “Which has ballooned to the point where many people believe that a founder-CEO, in particular, actually has to be a jerk to be a genius.”

She calls it the Steve Jobs Syndrome, and she’s witnessed both powerful and up-and-coming tech exes believing in the myth like it’s doctrine. Theranos CEO Holmes ruthlessly copied Jobs — not just by wearing black turtlenecks — but also by following his example of persuading people “to believe he was a prophet even when he was wrong,” Gavet writes.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - More details of Russia's C19 virus trials become available 1

Submitted by PuceBaboon
PuceBaboon writes: Over at Ars Technica,, John Trimmer has done a great job of condensing down the initial report (from The Lancet) of the recent vaccine trials in Russia.

The main points from this initial, small-scale testing are that it works (it produces SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies), but with some side effects (elevated temperature, headache, tiredness, joint pain and some pain at the site of the injection). The testing also showed that an initial vaccine injection, followed by a booster shot, was much more effective in producing antibodies than just a single shot.

In addition to the results above, testing has shown that the vaccine is still effective after having been freeze-dried and then reconstituted (meaning that it should be more convenient and cheaper to distribute than the liquid version).

There are a couple of words of caution to go along with the (mostly) good news, though. The initial test groups were very small (total 76) and the test subjects were predominantly younger than the target 18-60 year-old range (according to the original Lancet article). The follow-up testing was also limited to just 42 days. To balance this, it was announced towards the end of August that there would be a further, 40,000 participant clinical trial before the vaccine was released for public use.

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