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Comment It's ridiculous that SSNs should be sensitive info (Score 5, Insightful) 391

by water-vole (#35289958) Attached to: Why Google Wants Your Kid's SSN
The problem isn't with google for collecting social security numbers. The problem is that SSNs are so sensitive in the US. I live in Sweden and here social security numbers are a matter of public record and many companies collect these numbers from their customers for their databases. It's quite convenient and, if done right, not as privacy infringing as people seem to think. It's quite ridiculous to have, like the US, a system where you can impersonate someone by knowing their number.

Comment Quantity, not quality, is often prioritised. (Score 5, Insightful) 453

by water-vole (#34737730) Attached to: Why Published Research Findings Are Often False
I'm a scientist myself. It's quite clear from where I'm standing that to get good jobs, research grants, etc one needs plenty of published articles. Whether the conclusions of those are true or false is not something that hiring committees will delve into too much. If you are young and have a family to support, it can be tempting to take shortcuts.

Comment Re:not so fast (Score 1) 345

by water-vole (#24038557) Attached to: Claimed Proof of Riemann Hypothesis
Most of the "proofs" that you talk about are by crackpots who have published almost nothing before. This guy has 21 publications according to mathscinet, some of which are in relatively prestigious journals. So we should take this a bit more serious than the RH proof spam on the arXiv that the parent talks about. That said, it has happened before that a well respected mathematician has announced a proof for the RH that has turned out to be false (de Brange comes to mind). So the jury is still out on this one.
Earth

Submission + - Hot Climate Could Shut Down Plate Tectonics (physorg.com)

Submitted by esocid
esocid writes: A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet's crust to become locked in place. "The heat required goes far beyond anything we expect from human-induced climate change, but things like volcanic activity and changes in the sun's luminosity could lead to this level of heating," said lead author Adrian Lenardic. "Our goal was to establish an upper limit of naturally generated climate variation beyond which the entire solid planet would respond." The findings may explain why Venus evolved differently from Earth. The two planets are close in size and geological makeup, but Venus' carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere is almost 100 times more dense than the Earth's and acts like a blanket. As a result, Venus' surface temperature is hotter than that of even Mercury, which is twice as close to the sun. "We found the Earth's plate tectonics could become unstable if the surface temperature rose by 100 degrees Fahrenheit or more for a few million years," Lenardic said. "The time period and the rise in temperatures, while drastic for humans, are not unreasonable on a geologic scale, particularly compared to what scientists previously thought would be required to affect a planet's geodynamics."

Now with the correct link to the article.
Space

Submission + - Piece of Missing Cosmic Matter Found (yahoo.com)

Submitted by mgmirkin
mgmirkin writes:
Astronomers have found a piece of the universe's puzzle that's been missing for awhile: a type of extremely hot, dense matter that is all but invisible to us.
...
Along with dark matter, the missing baryonic matter is thought to form an enormous spider web of tendrils that connect galaxy clusters, which sit on threads and knots in the web.

The missing part of this matter was thought to be a hot, ultra-thin gas haze of very low density between larger structures. Its hellacious temperature means that it only emits far-ultraviolet and X-ray radiation.
...
"So far we could only see the clusters, the dense knots of the web. Now we are starting to see the connecting wires of the immense cosmic spider web," said MPE study team member Aurora Simionescu of the discovery of this missing baryonic matter.

A similar baryonic haze, 150 times hotter than the sun's surface, was indirectly detected surrounding the Milky Way and connecting about three dozen other galaxies known collectively as the Local Group in 2003 by astronomers at Harvard and Ohio State Universities.

See original article here: Piece of Missing Cosmic Matter Found
Microsoft

Submission + - Update on YouTube blocking by Microsoft (live.com)

Submitted by Xpl
Xpl writes: A couple of days ago, Slashdot reported that Microsoft could be potentially blocking YouTube links. In an update to that story, Microsoft's Live Messenger team posted an update on its blog claiming that

Our service was incorrectly blocking some legitimate IP addresses ... the blocks were made by our partner as a result of their process to block harmful URLs
There is no explicit mention of youtube, but you can read the full text of the Microsoft side of the story here
Security

Submission + - Anonymous Coward steals data of 6m Chili's (cnn.com)

Submitted by
guruevi
guruevi writes: "Slashdot's most favorite poster, the one and only with uid 666, Anonymous Coward stole personal data of 6 million Chileans — reportedly including a daughter of the president — and posted it briefly on the Internet, authorities said Sunday. The hacker said he intended "to demonstrate how poorly protected the data in Chile is, and how nobody works to protect it."

Police Chief Jaime Jara confirmed that authorities were investigating the theft of the leaked data, which he said included identity card numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mails and academic background. The data is currently offline but it could have been downloaded by some visitors. Torrent anyone?"

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