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Comment Re:Neat! (Score 3, Interesting) 90

No, corporations aren't going to work on these things for 43,75 USD/hour.

As you can see by the screenshots they provide, the average winning rate is 171 USD/hour, which does add up with the data from BLS.gov, since you have to account for benefits and a lot of the overhead, plus, they're looking for senior people, after all.

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current...

Comment Wait, they never ruled out HTLV! (Score 2) 138

by ConstantineM (#50771005) Attached to: First Cancer Case Confirmed From Fukushima Cleanup

In the US, they've entertained the idea to stop testing donor's blood for HTLV-1/2 because it's so rare in North America, but in Japan, the virus is epidemic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Based on the criteria for compensation described in the article, it looks like the HTLV status of this worker has never been taken into any consideration, so just because his claim was valid and was accepted, doesn't at all mean that there's a correlation between the events.

Comment And even more legal in Hollywood, too. (Score 1) 602

And don't forget the people working in Hollywood. If you're working as an extra for background actions, for the minimum wage already, and it takes you half the time to find jobs where you match the requirements, as well as extra money for costumes etc, then you're effectively working for half the minimum wage. Not to mention hour-long commute times!

I've recently visited LA for the first time, and participated as an unpaid extra (just for fun) in Ted 2 (just happened to be the movie available), also talked with the locals on the set who work as paid extras. I got the impression that overall they totally hate the unpaid ones, because that's further reinforcement for their minimum wages.

Submission + - Disruptive bloodwork startup may offer mostly vaporware

Submitted by dmr001
dmr001 writes: As seen previously, Palo Alto startup Theranos planned to put the power of affordable lab work directly in the hands of patients with tiny fingerprick samples taken at Walgreen's, with four hour turnaround. The company claimed their tests were "made possible by advances in the field of microfluidics." But they were cagey about methodology and didn't use FDA approved analyzers.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports (paywalled) (among others) that all but one of Theranos' analyzers currently in use is off the shelf, and that their tiny samples may not always have been accurate. Typically cagey founder Elizabeth Holmes vigorously disputes the criticism of her $9 billion startup, but entrenched players like Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp (which do quite well charging orders of magnitude above Theranos' prices) are likely doing a happy dance.

Physicians worrying about patients bringing in their own carcinoembryonic antigen levels and Epstein Barr Virus panels to confirm their Internet diagnoses of cancer and chronic fatigue may also be breathing sighs of relief, albeit with bittersweet regret at the potential loss of the price advantage and milliliter samples.

Submission + - TSA Soon to Require Passports for Travel Out of Four States

Submitted by Frosty Piss
Frosty Piss writes: Next year, millions of Americans might have to start using passports to fly on domestic flights. A decade ago, the U.S. government issued stricter standards for state-issued IDs, including drivers licenses. Following recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, President Bush signed into law the REAL ID Act in 2005, and four states have refused to comply: Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New York. After January 1st, 2016, the TSA will only accept REAL ID complaint driver's licences, $55 passport cards, or $135 passport books as valid ID.

Submission + - Amazon lawsuit aims to kill fake reviews (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: The ability to read reviews of products before making a purchase is one of the great advantages of online shopping. But how do you know that what you're reading is a genuine review and not just glowing praise planted by the seller or manufacturer? Fake reviews are a serious problem, and Amazon is trying to do something about it.

The retail giant has filed a lawsuit against 1,114 individuals for writing "false, misleading, and inauthentic" reviews. Amazon says that the fakers are tarnishing its reputation, and the attempt to clean up the site is something that will be welcomed by consumers.

Submission + - Cops are asking Ancestry.com and 23andMe for their customers' DNA (fusion.net)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: When companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe first invited people to send in their DNA for genealogy tracing and medical diagnostic tests, privacy advocates warned about the creation of giant genetic databases that might one day be used against participants by law enforcement. DNA, after all, can be a key to solving crimes. It âoehas serious information about you and your family,â genetic privacy advocate Jeremy Gruber told me back in 2010 when such services were just getting popular.

Now, five years later, when 23andMe and Ancestry both have over a million customers, those warnings are looking prescient. "Your relative's DNA could turn you into a suspect," warns Wired , writing about a case from earlier this year, in which New Orleans filmmaker Michael Usry became a suspect in an unsolved murder case after cops did a familial genetic search using semen collected in 1996. The cops searched an Ancestry.com database and got a familial match to a saliva sample Usry's father had given years earlier. Usry was ultimately determined to be innocent and the Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a "wild goose chase" that demonstrated "the very real threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by law enforcement access to private genetic databases."

Comment These are great for programmers (Score 0) 77

by ConstantineM (#50716067) Attached to: Why Many CSS Colors Have Goofy Names

These are great for us technical folks.

I'm a systems engineer; when I'm doing a new web-site, I just go to http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-colo..., and select one of the fancy names, and see how it looks.

If it doesn't match with the rest of the colour scheme or just looks off, I scroll the list until I see another colour and name that I like.

Better than in the old days where you had to use hex number or a palette, plus with these fancy names, you can be guaranteed that the colours would be consistent and at least somewhat maintainable.

Submission + - Untamed OpenBSD gets a pledge(2), hazing follows

Submitted by ConstantineM
ConstantineM writes: Two weeks after making a presentation on the new tame(2) in OpenBSD, Theo de Raadt has untamed the tame(), and declared it as the new pledge() system call instead.

The call bears system call number 108 , which has been the only unchanged part about it since its original introduction to syscalls.master some 3 months prior as sys_tame(int flags), having since hazed its way through multiple incarnations to arrive at the present and more modern-looking sys_pledge(const char *request, const char **paths).

What's it for? Pledge is OpenBSD's answer to capsicum(4) capabilities and libcapsicum from FreeBSD and seccomp(2) from Linux, but done the OpenBSD way — fewer knobs and easier IU for higher adoption. In his presentation, Theo proclaims that "tame() implementation is only 1200 lines of code", and programmes "can use it with 3-10 changes", and that some hundred ones have already been tamed with minimal effort (and are currently pledging).

Some examples include cat , mkdir and patch , which all require merely two lines of code each. The original idea for syscall 108 came from the recent file(1) rewrite, which originally required 300 lines of systrace code to sandbox, which can now be accomplished in merely 4 lines with pledge .

The interface has not been declared stable or cross-platform yet, but the mailing list posts and commits do show active adoption within OpenBSD.

Submission + - Over 10,000 Problems Fixed In Detroit Thanks To Cellphone App (motorcitymuckraker.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Six months ago, Detroit's city officials launched a smartphone app called "Improve Detroit." The idea was to give residents a way to easily inform city hall of problems that needed to be fixed. For example: potholes, abandoned vehicles, broken hydrants and traffic lights, water leaks, and more. Since that time, over 10,000 issues have been fixed thanks to reports from that app. "Residents have long complained about city hall ignoring litter and broken utilities. But the app has provided a more transparent and direct approach to fixing problems." Perhaps most significant is its effect on the water supply: running water has been shut off to almost a thousand abandoned structures, and over 500 water main breaks have been located with the app's help. Crowd-sourced city improvement — imagine if apps like this become ubiquitous.

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