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Submission + - Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The U.S. tech industry added nearly 64,000 software related jobs last year, but as the workforce expanded, the average size of workers' pay checks declined by nearly 2%.The average annual wage of all workers in the software services sector was $99,000 in 2012, about $2,000 less than the prior year, reported TechAmerica Foundation in its annual Cyberstates report. There are multiple theories for the decline in pay, but a common one cited by analysts is simply that the new people being hired are paid less than previous averages.

Submission + - Brain Zapping Improves Math Ability (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: If you are one of the 20% of healthy adults who struggle with basic arithmetic, simple tasks like splitting the dinner bill can be excruciating. Now, a new study suggests that a gentle, painless electrical current applied to the brain can boost math performance for up to 6 months. Researchers don't fully understand how it works, however, and there could be side effects.

Submission + - Hawking boycotts HebrewU conference, against Israel's Palestinian apartheid

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Hawking has brought attention to Israel's horrible treatment of the Palestinians, eg, by boycotting a conference at Hebrew University. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-09/stephen-hawking-to-boycott-israel-conference/4678414
Cf Anna Baltzer's documentary: "Life In Occupied Palestine" on hardships faced regularly by Palestinians in Israel, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrOdCG7RrvE
I, for one, am disappointed by CBC, who, in "The Current" spent so much time asking into the ethics of such boycotts, ie, instead of investigating Israel's part in causing daily tragedies, suffered by Israeli Palestinians, or providing a link to Anna Baltzer's documentary, so people can decide for themselves whether or not to join a boycott like Hawking's.

Submission + - Google I/O 2013 Begins at the Moscone Center (fliqolet.com)

Submitted by Supriyo Das
Supriyo Das writes: Google I/O 2013 has begun at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Google has made announcements on new designs on Google+, music streaming, new features in Google Map and a new Samsung S4 like device, which will be running on Android.

Submission + - Patenting open source software (outercurve.org)

Submitted by dp619
dp619 writes: The tactic of patenting open source software to guard against patent trolls and the weaponization of corporate patent portfolios is gaining momentum in the FOSS community. Organizations including the Open Innovation Network, Google and Redhat have built defensive patent portfolios (the latter two are defending their product lines). This approach has limitations.

Penn State law professor Clark Asay writes in an Outercurve Foundation blog examining the trend, "Patenting FOSS may help in some cases, but the nature of FOSS development itself may mean that patenting some collaboratively developed inventions is inherently more difficult, if not impossible, in many others. Consequently, strategies for mitigating patent risk that rely on FOSS communities patenting their technologies include inherent limitations. Itâ(TM)s not entirely clear how best to reform patent law in order to better reconcile it with alternative models of innovation. But in the meantime, FOSS still presents certain advantages that, while dimmed by the prospect of patent suits, remain significant."

Submission + - Teaching Kids to Code: Picking Apart 40 Such Projects (edsurge.com)

Submitted by GCA10
GCA10 writes: There's an explosion of interest in getting computer coding into the mainstream curriculum at U.S. schools. That's good. But does anyone know how to teach programming properly? This study by EdSurge analyzes 40 such projects, with lots of lessons about what works and what doesn't.

Submission + - NOVA special to examine tech's role in capturing bombers (networkworld.com)

Submitted by netbuzz
netbuzz writes: NOVA and PBS have announced that they will air an hour-long special May 29 dedicated to examining the roles played by technology and science in the investigation that led to the capture of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. From a press release: “Given hundreds of hours of surveillance and bystander videos, how did agents spot the suspects in a sea of spectators? Why couldn't facial recognition software I.D. the criminals? How much could bomb chemistry analysis, cell phone GPS, infrared imagery, and crowdsourcing reveal about the secrets behind this horrific crime?”

Submission + - Everest is Melting

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: Sudeep Thakuri of the University of Milan and his colleagues have discovered that 'Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters (590 feet).' The Himalayan glaciers provide some of the fresh water supply to around 1.5 billion people in northeast India, Bangladesh, Tibet, and other places. According to this National Academy of Sciences report, changes in precipitation patterns (including monsoons) and changes in water usage patterns by humans might affect the water supply more than the shrinking glaciers.

Submission + - Billion-year-old water found under Ontario (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Scientists working 2.4 kilometres below Earth's surface in a Canadian mine have tapped a source of water that has remained isolated for at least a billion years. The researchers say they do not yet know whether anything has been living in it all this time, but the water contains high levels of methane and hydrogen — the right stuff to support life.
Micrometre-scale pockets in minerals billions of years old can hold water that was trapped during the minerals’ formation. But no source of free-flowing water passing through interconnected cracks or pores in Earth’s crust has previously been shown to have stayed isolated for more than tens of millions of years (paper abstract).

Submission + - Mauna Loa reaches 400 ppm (noaa.gov)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: Today, NOAA reported that "On May 9, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time since measurements began in 1958." For comparison, over the last 800,000 years, CO2 has ranged from roughly 180 ppm to 280 ppm. The last time Earth had 400 ppm was probably more than 3 megayears ago. When will CO2 pass 500 ppm?

Submission + - Transfusions reverse aging and disease, drug isolated. (cell.com)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: Published today in the journal Cell and reported by WBUR radio in this interview Drs Richard Lee and Amy Wagers have isolated GDF-11 as a negative regulator of age-associated cardiac hypertrophy. Through a type of transfusion called parabiotic or "shared circulation" in mice — one old and sick, the other young and well — they managed to reverse this age-associated heart disease. From there isolated an active agent GDF-11 present in the younger mouse but absent in the older which reverses the condition when administered directly. They are also using the agent to restore other aged/diseased tissues and organs. Human applications are expected within six years.

Since the basis for the treatment is ordinary sharing of blood between an older ill, and younger healthy patient, someone is likely to start offering the transfusion treatment somewhere in the world, soon, to those with the means to find a young and healthy volunteer. It may be time to have the discussion of the consequences of drastically prolonging human life.
Security

Submission + - Security Engineering textbook posted on author's website (cam.ac.uk)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: The (arguably) best single-volume work on computer security, Ross Anderson’s Security Engineering, has been posted on the author's Cambridge website as a bunch of PDF files. The book covers many of the major issues in computer security, such as user psychology and usability, access control, API security, physical security, the economics of security, etc. In light of the recent Pwn2Own results, perhaps the browser makers should read this book.

Submission + - T-Mobile USA to Cease Offering New Contracts? (tmonews.com)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: The T-Mobile news blog TMONews is reporting that T-Mobile USA is considering going contract-free in the near future. Is this the beginning of a new cell phone era in the US? Will the US finally catch up with most of the rest of the world and have a truly competitive mobile communications service industry?

Submission + - LibreOffice 4 Released (documentfoundation.org)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: LibreOffice 4.0.0 has been released. Some of the changes are for developers: an improved API, a new graphics stack, migrating German code comments to English, and moving from Apache 2.0 to LGPLv3 & MPLv2. Some user-facing changes are: better interoperability with other software, some functional & UI improvements, and some performance gains.

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