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Submission + - Something Hit Earth in 773 AD But Nobody Knows What (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: In November 2012, a group of Japanese scientists discovered that the concentration of carbon-14 in Japanese cedar trees suddenly rose between 774 AD and 775 AD. Others have since found similar evidence and narrowed the date to 773 AD. Astronomers think this stuff must have come from space so now the quest is on to find the extraterrestrial culprit. Carbon-14 is continually generated in the atmosphere by cosmic rays hitting nitrogen atoms. But because carbon-14 is radioactive, it naturally decays back into nitrogen with a half-life of about 5700 years. This constant process of production and decay leaves the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere relatively constant at about one part in a trillion will be carbon-14. One possible reason for the increase is that the Sun belched a superflare our way, engulfing the planet in huge cloud of high energy protons. Recent calculations suggest this could happen once every 3000 years and so seems unlikely. Another possibility is a nearby supernova, which bathed the entire Solar System in additional cosmic rays. However, astronomers cannot see any likely candidates nearby and there are no historical observations of a supernova from that time. Yet another possibility is that a comet may have hit the Earth, dumping the extra carbon-14 in the atmosphere. But astronomers have ruled that out on the basis that a comet carrying enough carbon-14 must have been over 100 km in diameter and would surely have left other evidence such as an impact crater. So for the moment, astronomers are stumped.

Submission + - Adapting Monopoly to demonstrate Modern Monetary Theory (neweconomicperspectives.org) 2

Submitted by buswolley
buswolley writes: Are we really too poor to put America back to work making and building the things we need to maintain a prosperous nation? -Mitch Green

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) posits that America is not too poor, and now proponents of the theory have adapted the rules of the classic board game of Monopoly to demonstrate their case
  http://neweconomicperspectives...

For those that would like a background a great starter is Warren Mosler's "Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economy Policy" at http://moslereconomics.com/wp-...

Submission + - Glow-In-The-Dark Civil War Soldiers Explained (mentalfloss.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Some of the Shiloh soldiers sat in the mud for two rainy days and nights waiting for the medics to get around to them. As dusk fell the first night, some of them noticed something very strange: their wounds were glowing, casting a faint light into the darkness of the battlefield. Even stranger, when the troops were eventually moved to field hospitals, those whose wounds glowed had a better survival rate and had their wounds heal more quickly and cleanly than their unilluminated brothers-in-arms. The seemingly protective effect of the mysterious light earned it the nickname “Angel’s Glow.” Today we know that it was a bacteria now known as P. luminescens.

Comment Re:Team Viewer (Score 0) 165

by polymath69 (#45853525) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best App For Android For Remote Access To Mac Or PC?

Yea, I loved how my parents did everything out in the open; made it a heck of a lot easier to work around all those restrictions since I knew what they were.

(This actually isn't true - my parents were smart enough to know better)

"I was hit on the head by a meteorite once, so everyone should always wear hard-hats. By the way, I wasn't actually ever hit on the head by a meteorite."

TL;DR What??

Submission + - Exponential Algorithm in Windows Update Slowing XP Machines (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: An interesting bug regarding update dependency calculation has been found in Windows XP. By design, machines using Windows Update retrieve patch information from Microsoft's update servers (or possibly WSUS in a company setting). That patch information contains information about each patch: what software it applies to and, critically, what historic patch or patches the current patch supersedes. Unfortunately, the Windows Update client components used an algorithm with exponential scaling when processing these lists. Each additional superseded patch would double the time taken to process the list. With the operating system now very old, those lists have grown long, sometimes to 40 or more items. On a new machine, that processing appeared to be almost instantaneous. It is now very slow. After starting the system, svchost.exe is chewing up the entire processor, sometimes for an hour or more at a time. Wait long enough after booting and the machine will eventually return to normalcy. Microsoft thought that it had this problem fixed in November's Patch Tuesday update after it culled the supersedence lists. That update didn't appear to fix the problem. The company thought that its December update would also provide a solution, with even more aggressive culling. That didn't seem to help either. For one reason or another, Microsoft's test scenarios for the patches didn't reflect the experience of real Windows XP machines.
Censorship

North Korea Erases Executed Official From the Internet 276

Posted by Soulskill from the personhood-redacted dept.
itwbennett writes "The North Korean state propaganda machine has edited and deleted hundreds of news articles that mention Jang Song Thaek, the former top government and party official and uncle to leader Kim Jong Un, who was executed Thursday. Earlier this week, Jang was arrested in front of hundreds of senior members of the ruling Worker's Party of Korea and denounced for numerous alleged acts against the state and Kim Jong Un. From arrest to trial to death took only four days and the unprecedented fall from grace is widely being interpreted as an attempt by Kim Jong Un to keep officials loyal and scared."
Science

Scientists Find Olfactory "Memory" Passed Between Generations In Mice 118

Posted by samzenpus from the mama's-gonna-put-all-of-her-fears-into-you dept.
New submitter Raging Bool writes "The BBC is reporting that acquired phobias or aversions by mice can be passed on to subsequent generations. From the article: 'Experiments showed that a traumatic event could affect the DNA in sperm and alter the brains and behavior of subsequent generations. A Nature Neuroscience study shows mice trained to avoid a smell passed their aversion on to their 'grandchildren.''"

Submission + - The ultimate anti-action online game: Waiting In Line 3D

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Looking a lot like the venerable Wolfenstein 3D or similar Id action games of the DOS days, the new online game Waiting in Line 3D was released Monday by developer Rajeev Basu, and was played 50,000 times in its first 24 hours of activity... er... inactivity. Is the complete lack of any action a brilliant satire of computer gaming? Is it software-based performance art? Is it silly? Judge for yourself, if you can meet the challenge!

Submission + - Boston Cops Outraged Over Plans To Watch Their Movements Using GPS 3

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: The Boston Globe reports that the pending use of GPS tracking devices, slated to be installed in Boston police cruisers, has many officers worried that commanders will monitor their every move. Boston police administrators say the system gives dispatchers the ability to see where officers are, rather than wait for a radio response and supervisors insist the system will improve their response to emergencies. Using GPS, they say, accelerates their response to a call for a shooting or an armed robbery. “We’ll be moving forward as quickly as possible,” says former police commissioner Edward F. Davis. “There are an enormous amount of benefits. . . . This is clearly an important enhancement and should lead to further reductions in crime.” But some officers said they worry that under such a system they will have to explain their every move and possibly compromise their ability to court street sources. “No one likes it. Who wants to be followed all over the place?” said one officer who spoke anonymously because department rules forbid police from speaking to the media without authorization. “If I take my cruiser and I meet [reluctant witnesses] to talk, eventually they can follow me and say why were you in a back dark street for 45 minutes? It’s going to open up a can of worms that can’t be closed.” Meanwhile civil libertarians are relishing the rank and file's own backlash. "The irony of police objecting to GPS technology for privacy reasons is hard to miss in the aftermath of United States v. Jones," says Woodrow Hartzog. "But the officers’ concerns about privacy illustrate just how revealing GPS technology can be. Departments are going to have to confront the chilling effect this surveillance might have on police behavior."

Submission + - TSA Screener Bled to Death because Police wouldn't let Paramedics Into LAX (foxnews.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: An update on the tragic Gunman Opens Fire At LAX (http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/11/01/2014210/gunman-opens-fire-at-lax) story: FoxNews reports (www.foxnews.com/us/2013/11/15/lax-security-officer-bled-for-33-minutes-as-help-stood-by) that shot Transportation Security Administration Officer Gerardo Hernandez laid helplessly bleeding after a gunman opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport while paramedics waited 150 yards away because police had not declared the terminal safe to enter.

33 minutes passed before wounded Transportation Security Administration Officer Gerardo Hernandez, who was about 20 feet from an exit, was wheeled out by police to an ambulance. For all but five of those minutes, there was no threat from the suspected gunman — he had been shot and was in custody.

Formal conclusions may take months to reach, but what is already known raises the possibility that a lack of coordination between police and fire officials prevented speedy treatment for Hernandez and other victims. Victor Payes, President of the Union Local for TSA Workers at LAX explained: "I basically think there's a lack of coordination between entities at this airport. That lack of coordination may have led to something that shouldn't have happened. We may be talking about Officer Hernandez as a survivor."

Comment Re:RPN calcs- esp 35s (Score 1) 328

by darrylo (#45448075) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Cheap Second Calculators For Tests?

The wiki-p page for the 35s [wikipedia.org]. Wow! - the first time I've seen this; looks like their classic design. Is HP back when it comes to calculators?

Good question, and you'll get different opinions from different folks.

The 35s is arguably the best desktop RPN calculator (that is currently being produced and sold). As you say, for nontrivial stuff, most people would use some desktop program.

As for HP's other scientific RPN calculators: the old high-end RPN HP 50g calculator has the Enter key in a weird location: the lower-right corner. The new HP Prime calculator almost has the Enter key in the correct location; while it's above the number keys, it's to the right (the usual spot is to the left). Also, while the HP Prime is pretty nice, technically, it's really aimed at the educational market (e.g., CAS only works in algebraic mode, not RPN).

Submission + - 5 ridiculous tech fees you're still paying

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: None of us like to spend money (except on shiny new toys). But even we curmudgeons can understand that companies need to charge for things that cost them money; and profit-making is at the heart of our economy.

Still, several charges appear on our bills that can drive even the most complacent techie into a screaming fit. How did this advertised price turn into that much on the final bill? Why are they charging for it in the first place? Herewith, five fees that make no sense at all — and yet we still fork over money for them.

For example: "While Internet access is free in coffee shops, some public transit, and even campsites, as of 2009 15% of hotels charged guests for the privilege of checking their e-mail and catching up on watching cat videos. Oddly, budget and midscale hotel chains are more likely to offer free Wi-Fi, while luxurious hotels — already costing the traveler more — regularly ding us."

Comment Re:"We believed we knew better what customers need (Score 1) 278

by darrylo (#44997397) Attached to: How BlackBerry Blew It

It's more than that (although what you wrote is certainly right).

One of Blackberry's (arguably many) problems is that they failed to realize how the consumer market, being much larger than the enterprise market, could drive the enterprise market. As others have said, by going after the consumer market, by allowing independent devs to profit off the consumer market, and by having a reasonable development system, Apple attracted a boatload of devs and, therefore, features and functionality. Eventually, if you allow the features/functionality to grow properly, the consumer market is going to spill over into the enterprise one. (Side note: by "grow properly", I'm talking about Apple's tight control over the app store. As much as people may dislike it, there's really no disagreeing that the tight control has generally maintained an acceptable level of app quality. I don't think I could say that about BBW.)

Comment Re:Nokia's data source is great (Score 1) 57

by darrylo (#41986847) Attached to: Nokia Releasing Maps for Competing Devices

While you and others have no problems with Apple maps, I think you're falling into the common trap: "I have no problems, and I don't see how anyone else can have problems, therefore there really aren't any problems". Lots of people are screaming and, if this really was overblown, Tim Cook would not have apologized, and Scott Forstall might still have a job at Apple.

I don't use public transit, and so I can't really comment on the accuracy; however, from the screaming that I've seen, the transit issues seemed to fall into two subcategories:

1. Nonexistent transit POIs. Yeah, accuracy (as in your NYC example) may certainly be an issue, but I'd argue that "borderline unreliable" is still better than nothing (but, see the note below).

2. Google has transit schedules linked to the transit POIs. It's pretty easy to see when the next bus/train is going to arrive/leave.

Note: it seemed to me that the people complaining were "casual/occasional/out-of-town" users of public transit. These people don't use public transit enough to know either the schedules or terminal locations.

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