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Submission + - Pluto-Bound spacecraft ends hibernation to start mission

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft awoke from hibernation on Saturday and sent a radio confirmation that it had successfully turned itself back on one and a half hours later. The spacecraft has been travelling for nine years across the solar system towards its destination, Pluto. From the article: "In 2006, with New Horizons already on its way, Pluto was stripped of its title as the ninth planet in the solar system and became a dwarf planet, of which more than 1,000 have since been discovered in the Kuiper Belt. With New Horizons approaching Pluto's doorstep, scientists are eager for their first close-up look at this unexplored domain."

Submission + - James Watson's Nobel Medal Sells for $4.1M

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientist James Watson, who hasissues with women, Africans, and the scientific community, has became the only living Nobel laureate to sell his medal after it fetched over $4 million at auction. "Watson told Nature that his motivation for selling the medal is a chance for redemption. He plans to donate some of the proceeds to Cold Spring, where he still draws a $375,000 base salary as chancellor emeritus, and also to University College Cork in Ireland to help establish an institute dedicated to the mathematician George Boole. 'I'm 52% Irish,' Watson said by way of explanation."

Submission + - New Mexico levies $54M against US for violations at nuclear repository (theguardian.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: New Mexico on Saturday levied more than $54 million in penalties against the US Department of Energy for numerous violations that resulted in the indefinite closure of the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository.

The state Environment Department delivered a pair of compliance orders to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, marking the state’s largest penalty ever imposed on the agency. Together, the orders outline more than 30 state permit violations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeastern New Mexico and at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The orders and the civil penalties that come with them are just the beginning of possible financial sanctions the Energy Department could face in New Mexico. The state says it’s continuing to investigate and more fines are possible.

The focus has been on a canister of waste from Los Alamos that ruptured in one of WIPP’s storage rooms in February. More than 20 workers were contaminated and the facility was forced to close, putting in jeopardy efforts around the country to clean up tons of Cold War-era waste.

Submission + - British "porn filter" blocks access to Chaos Computer Club and congress (ccc.de)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A significant portion of British citizens are currently blocked from accessing the Chaos Computer Club's (CCC) website. On top of that, Vodafone customers are blocked from accessing the ticket sale to this year's Chaos Communication Congress (31C3).

Submission + - How to convince my company to stop using passwords. 1

Submitted by gurps_npc
gurps_npc writes: People hate passwords more than 4chan hates, well everything. Any password policy sufficiently complex to be secure is too complex to remember so people write them down. Worse, company policy is to leave a message on your answering machine describing it — when the software uses a 6 number password to get your 8 letter/symbol/number/capital/no dupes (ever) real password.



I want to suggest a better method. I want to go with a two factor system — either token based or phone based (LaunchKey, Clef, Nok Nok). Does anyone have any advice on specific systems — or points I should bring up? Or alternatives such as graphical based passwords?

Submission + - Ability to consume alcohol may have shaped human evolution (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Craving a stiff drink after the holiday weekend? Your desire to consume alcohol, as well as your body’s ability to break down the ethanol that makes you tipsy, dates back about 10 million years, researchers have discovered. The new finding not only helps shed light on the behavior of our primate ancestors, but also might explain why alcoholism—or even the craving for a single drink—exists in the first place.

Submission + - Workers On Autism Spectrum Finding Careers In Software Testing

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: According to Autism Speaks, about 85% of people who have autism in the United States are currently unemployed or underemployed, but a social enterprise organization called Meticulon is training autistic individuals for highly skilled jobs in software testing http://sdtimes.com/autistic-ad.... According to Meticulon, autistic people often possess sharp memory and pattern matching skills as well as attention to detail, making them ideal candidates for software testing jobs. Each year's crop of autistic students or Meticulon Consultants is tested and evaluated to develop their MindMap, a unique profile of skills and ideal work environment ultimately used to find these trained software testers an ideal job.

Submission + - An in-depth interview with Claire Lee, a South African ATLAS physicist at CERN (htxt.co.za)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Anyone with even a passing interest in the sciences must have wondered what it’s like to work at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN. What wonders await those who join its ranks? What marvels must there be in the midst of such concentrated brain power?
Since our chances of landing a job at CERN are probably limited to exciting opportunities in catering or sanitation, we figured it’s better to ask someone who does know. Someone like South African phyicist Claire Lee, who works right on ATLAS – one of the two elements of the LHC project that confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson in 2012.

Submission + - Game Theory Analysis Shows How Evolution Favors Cooperation's Collapse (upenn.edu)

Submitted by Ugmug
Ugmug writes: Last year, University of Pennsylvania researchers Alexander J. Stewart and Joshua B. Plotkin published a mathematical explanation for why cooperation and generosity have evolved in nature. Using the classical game theory match-up known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, they found that generous strategies were the only ones that could persist and succeed in a multi-player, iterated version of the game over the long term.

But now they’ve come out with a somewhat less rosy view of evolution. With a new analysis of the Prisoner’s Dilemma played in a large, evolving population, they found that adding more flexibility to the game can allow selfish strategies to be more successful. The work paints a dimmer but likely more realistic view of how cooperation and selfishness balance one another in nature.

Submission + - IT career path after 35?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: All my friends seem to be moving towards a managerial role, and I'm concerned about my increasing age in a business where, according to some, 30 might as well be 50.
But I still feel young, and feel like I have so much to learn. So many interesting technical challenges cross my path, as I manage to move towards larger and more complex projects. I am in higher demand than ever, often with multiple headhunters contacting me in the same day. But will it last?
Is age discrimination a myth? Are there statistics on how many IT people move into management? I know some older programmers who got bored with management and successfully resumed a tech-only career. Others started their own small business.
What has been your experience? Do you/have you assumed a managerial role? Did you enjoy it? Have you managed to stay current and marketable long after 35?

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Japanese probe Hayabusa2 ready to launch on mission to mine an asteroid - South (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

South China Morning Post (subscription)
Japanese probe Hayabusa2 ready to launch on mission to mine an asteroid
South China Morning Post (subscription)
A Japanese space probe the size of a fridge will launch tomorrow on a six-year mission to mine an asteroid in the hunt for clues about the birth of the solar system. Hayabusa2 had been set to blast off aboard Japan's main H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima...
Japan's Asteroid Probe To Lift Off On Monday After Bad Weather Delays LaunchInternational Business Times
A New Space Mission Ready to Be Launched by JapanCTA News
Japan's launch of asteroid probe delayed, will lift off Monday insteadScience Recorder
GlobalPost-Beta Wired
all 83 news articles

Submission + - Music publishers sue an ISP over piracy (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: From Ars Technica:
BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music have sued Cox Communications for copyright infringement, arguing that the Internet service provider doesn't do enough to punish those who download music illegally.
Both BMG and Round Hill are clients of Rightscorp, a copyright enforcement agent whose business is based on threatening ISPs with a high-stakes lawsuit if they don't forward settlement notices to users that Rightscorp believes are "repeat infringers" of copyright.
In their complaint (PDF), the music publishers also decided to publicly post IP addresses.

Submission + - Bad Lockup Bug Plagues Linux

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: A hard to track system lockup bug seems to have appeared in the span of couple of most recent Linux kernel releases. Dave Jones of Red Hat was the one to first report his experience of frequent lockups with 3.18. Later he found out that the issue is present in 3.17 too. The problem was first suspected to be related to Xen. A patch dating back to 2005 was pushed for Xen to fix a vmalloc_fault() path that was similar to what was reported by Dave. The patch had a comment that read "the line below does not always work. Needs investigating!" But it looks like this issue was never properly investigated. Due to the nature of the bug and its difficulty in tracking down, testers might be finding multiple but similar bugs within the kernel. Linus even suggested taking a look in the watchdog code. He also concluded the Xen bug to be a different issue. The bug hunt continues in the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

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