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Comment Re:"Did you even test this??!!!" (Score 5, Insightful) 523

by hendric (#51891529) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: What Are Some Insults No Developer Wants To Hear?

In my view, the kind of people who object to error messages that are complete sentences and contain three-syllable words are the kind of people who won't read any error message under any circumstances, but whatever. "ERR 34: Bad srvc" it is. Choke on it.

*sigh* The error message isn't for that user, it's for the person they call for help.

Submission + - Code.org Celebrates 100M Hours of Code, 5B Lines of Code (Whatever That Means)

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "The impact of $5 million," explained the pitch for the Code.org Indiegogo 'crowdfunding' campaign backed by matching funds from the likes of Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Google, means "100 million students do an Hour of Code." And on Tuesday — two months after the biggest Indiegogo campaign in history met its fundraising goal — Code.org took to Twitter to exclaim "We just passed 100 MILLION Hours of Code!", posted a YouTube video featuring the President and tech CEOs to commemorate the milestone, and boasted on Tumblr of also having 5 billion lines of code 'written' by students. "Thank you to everyone who's given computer science a shot with your very first Hour of Code," Code.org writes, "everyone who told a student or friend about it, and to our partners and donors who helped bring the movement to life." So, not to be a buzzkill, but what exactly does "do an Hour of Code" mean? On its website, Code.org notes that "we do not view the Hour of Code tracker to be an exact measure of usage", but asserts that "it is certainly directionally correct." The fuzzy public-facing stats (the City of 'Other' tops the HOC leaderboard) don't seem to bother the National Science Foundation, which has partnered with Code.org, taking note of how "Code.org, with its amazing marketing prowess, its Hour of Code, and its success in attracting major funding, has completely changed the national conversation" on getting CS education into the K-12 curriculum.

Submission + - Apple Invests $848 Million Into Solar Farm (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple is making a huge investment in solar energy, sending $848 million to First Solar’s California Flats Solar Project. The deal will supply Apple with energy for 25 years. Construction of the new 2,900-acre solar farm will start this summer and finish by the end of 2016. Apple's share of the energy produced will be about 130 megawatts, while another 150 MW will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric. "The iPhone maker already powers all of its data centers with renewable energy. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer, has advocated taking more steps to combat climate change."

Submission + - Alcohol's evaporating health benefits

Submitted by Heart44
Heart44 writes: A study in the bmj (British Medical Journal) shows that consuming alcohol — any volume, any type — does not increase life expectancy. Study here, bmj editorial here.
The article is not paywalled. From the conclusions: "Beneficial associations between low intensity alcohol consumption and all cause mortality may in part be attributable to inappropriate selection of a referent group and weak adjustment for confounders. "

Submission + - Samsung Smart TVs forcing ads into video streaming apps (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Just days after its TV voice recognition software came under fire for invading privacy, Samsung users are reporting unwanted Pepsi ads appearing while they watch their Smart TVs.

Reports are emerging that Samsung smart TVs have begun inserting short advertisements directly into video streaming apps, with no influence from the third-party app providers.

The news comes just days after Samsung made headlines for another incursion into user's lounge rooms, when it was revealed that its TV voice recognition software is capable of capturing personal information and transmitting it to third parties. The issue was discovered in the fine print of Samsung's voice recognition privacy policy, but the company says it has since changed the policy to "better explain what actually occurs" during this voice capture process.

The latest complaints directed at the South Korean electronics giant relate to a Pepsi advertisement that has reportedly started to appear during content streamed through Smart TV apps from personal media libraries and video streaming services.

The issue has been reported on the Plex streaming service — a brand of media player that allows users to stream their own video from a personal library or hard drive and push it to a smart TV.

One Plex user took to the company's customer forum to complain about the constant intrusion of ads on his Samsung TV.

"I have recently upgraded my Plex Media Server to version 0.9.1101 and every 10-15 minutes whilst watching content on my Samsung TV I get a Pepsi advertisement showing!" user Mike wrote. "At first I thought I was seeing things but no it repeats. Sometimes I can get out of it and go back to my media, others it hangs the app and the TV restarts."

Submission + - Comets Form Like Deep Fried Ice Cream Scoops (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif., have added another oddity to the cometary ‘weird list’: comets are best described as scoops of deep fried ice cream. “The crust is made of crystalline ice, while the interior is colder and more porous,” said Murthy Gudipati of JPL, co-author of a recent study appearing in The Journal of Physical Chemistry. “The organics are like a final layer of chocolate on top.”

Submission + - Wasp virus turns ladybugs into zombie babysitters (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The green-eyed wasp Dinocampus coccinellae turns ladybugs into zombie babysitters. Three weeks after a wasp lays its egg inside the hapless beetle, a wasp larva bursts from her belly and weaves itself a cocoon between her legs. The ladybug doesn’t die, but becomes paralyzed, involuntarily twitching her spotted red carapace to ward off predators until the adult wasp emerges a week later. How D. coccinellae enslaves its host at just the right time had been a mystery, but now researchers believe the insect has an accomplice: a newly identified virus that attacks the beetle’s brain. The findings raise questions about whether other parasites also use viruses as neurological weapons.

Submission + - Jon Stewart leaving "The Daily Show"

Submitted by slimjim8094
slimjim8094 writes: According to the NYT, Jon Stewart is leaving "The Daily Show". This was announced during the taping of this evening's show. He will “remain at the helm of ‘The Daily Show’ until later this year,” but no word on exactly when the change will take place, or what the replacement (host or show) will be. Presumably the current and past correspondents would be the first choice for a new host.

His program will be sorely missed by at least this viewer. Maybe Comedy Central can get John Oliver out of his HBO show...

Submission + - Why a quantum equation doesn't disprove the Big Bang

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: It is true: as reported on slashdot earlier today, a new calculation suggests that the Universe has no beginning, implying that space and time may have always existed. But that is not the same — despite what the original article states — as there being no Big Bang. Quite to the contrary, the Big Bang is extremely well-cemented as a scientifically valid fact, and it's only a decades-out-of-date assumption that would lead one to say that the birth of space and time is the same as the Big Bang.

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