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Submission + - Facebook Donated to 46 of 55 Members on Committee that Will Question Zuckerberg (usatoday.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The congressional panel that got the most Facebook contributions is the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which announced Wednesday morning it would question Zuckerberg on April 11. Members of the committee, whose jurisdiction gives it regulatory power over Internet companies, received nearly $381,000 in contributions tied to Facebook since 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The center is a non-partisan, non-profit group that compiles and analyzes disclosures made to the Federal Election Commission.

The second-highest total, $369,000, went to members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, which announced later that it would have a joint hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Zuckerberg on Tuesday. Judiciary Committee members have received $235,000 in Facebook contributions. On the House committee, Republicans got roughly twice as much as Democrats, counter to the broader trend in Facebook campaign gifts. Of the $7 million in contributions to all federal candidates tied to the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social network, Democrats got 65% to Republicans' 33%. Of the 55 members on the Energy and Commerce Committee this year, all but nine have received Facebook contributions in the past decade. The average Republican got $6,800, while the average Democrat got $6,750.

Submission + - SPAM: Newly Discovered Nazca Lines Hiding in The Desert For Thousands of Years

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Archaeologists in Peru have made a stunning discovery: over 50 previously unknown Nazca lines — and some of them are centuries older than the most famous of these magnificent desert drawings.

Most of these mysterious geoglyphs were created by the Nazca people, who lived in the area 1300 to 1800 years ago. But the researchers believe that some of the newfound ones were created even earlier — by the Paracas and Topará people, who lived there up to 700 years earlier.

The lines have been a source of fascination and wonder for decades. Created by pushing aside the top layer of red desert pebbles to reveal the pale layer underneath, these geoglyphs span vast tracts of the Nazca Desert, between the towns of Nazca and Palpa.

Some of them form geometric shapes, some are simple lines, and some are combined into elaborate depictions of animals and objects.

The most wondrous thing about these ancient symbols is that you often can't see what they depict from ground level. You have to get up in the air to discern the patterns, which is why their full glory wasn't understood until after the invention of airplanes.
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:Why are only good animals endangered? (Score 1) 130

by heteromonomer (#53663049) Attached to: US Puts Bumblebee On the Endangered Species List For First Time

A great question indeed. As a biologist, this would be my guess. Non-parasitic organisms are usually quite specific in their needs, i.e. in terms of what they eat, and habitat needs. Like an honest employee or a businessman would need a civilized society and infrastructure to survive and thrive. On the other hand, animal parasites (e.g. mosquitoes and ticks) are like thieves. They are non-specific and get away easily.

Comment Why not seed Venus with extremophiles? (Score 1) 125

I often wonder if we can seed Venus with a large collection of extremophiles from various earth environments? Like various hyperbaric sulfobacteria etc at hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the oceans and volcanoes. Some of them might survive and start the 'terraforming', even if the process takes several millions of years. Not that they can make it human-inhabitable anytime soon, but we can observe what microbes do survive, and figure out a way remove the sulfuric acid etc. And if any of them start thriving, they can be surprisingly fast in colonizing the planet.

Submission + - Alien life could feed on cosmic rays (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A bizarre microbe found deep in a gold mine in South Africa could provide a model for how life might survive in seemingly uninhabitable environments through the cosmos. Known as Desulforudis audaxviator, the rod-shaped bacterium thrives 2.8 kilometers underground in a habitat devoid of the things that power the vast majority of life on Earth—light, oxygen, and carbon. Instead, this “gold mine bug” gets energy from radioactive uranium in the depths of the mine. Now, scientists predict that life elsewhere in the universe might also feed off of radiation, especially radiation raining down from space.

Submission + - LinkedIn Accesses Gmail Contact Information Via 'Auto-Authorization' (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Curious as to why LinkedIn began suggesting potential new contacts whom he had only ever contacted by Gmail, research scientist Forrest Abouelnasr asked the company to explain. After discounting the possibility of address book imports which never took place, Linked in finally admitted the truth — that if you have Gmail and LinkedIn open in the same browser, a process called 'auto-authorization' will directly access your contacts in order to populate LinkedIn's 'suggested' contacts. A LinkedIn representative told Abouelnasr that the only way to prevent this happening is to access LinkedIn and Gmail in separate browsers, and that there is no setting that can be changed to stop this happening. She added:

‘We are not doing this to invade your privacy, we are doing this to assist you in growing your network. We don’t share this information with anyone else and is particular to your account only.’

Comment Re:The guy is full of himself (Score 1) 147

by heteromonomer (#49776031) Attached to: Apple Design Guru Jony Ive Named Chief Design Officer

This. Oh my god this. I'm a Windows/Linux gut for the last fifteen years. And after all the hype I finally bought a Mac to try it out as well as learn swift development. I struggle with everything. I am struggling to follow the Stanford YouTube lessons on iOS development. The coding is the easy part. The UI operations are such a learning curve for me. Every context is non intuitive. I mean I had no trouble switching between so many UIs in my life on Linux. The only great part about the osx is the menu thing on top. So I finally decided you simply use xcode in playground mode.

Comment Stupid premises (Score 1) 236

by heteromonomer (#49752423) Attached to: Asteroid Risk Greatly Overestimated By Almost Everyone

The article is stupid. Where to begin?

Averaging is not a good way to estimate things here. No one is concerned about a 100 people dying on average every year. Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. This is not akin to killing by (relatively) mundane causes like terrorism or a specific disease or automobile accidents.

It took 4 billion years to develop an intelligent civilization on a planet which is highly suitable to life. Which shows what the probability of intelligent civilizations is.

This is not a minor injury for a civilization. This is death. A few humans may survive, and even then it may take thousands of years to come back to the current state depending on how much of our knowledge survives in the ensuing chaos and starvation. The 1/70,000,000 chance of getting totally wiped out is a big enough for me to care a great deal about it.

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