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Comment The bill isn't going to go anywhere (Score 1) 127

by neile (#56005469) Attached to: The Legislative Fight Over Loot Boxes Expands To Washington State
The bill only has three sponsors. It's scheduled for a public hearing on January 31st and isn't scheduled for an executive session. Bills have to be voted out of committee no later than February 2nd to survive the legislative session. This bill isn't going anywhere beyond the public hearing.
Biotech

Synthetic Chromosomes Successfully Integrated Into Brewer's Yeast 107

Posted by Soulskill from the origin-story-for-superyeast dept.
New submitter dunnomattic writes: "Researchers at New York University School of Medicine have achieved a milestone in synthetic biology. A fully synthetic yeast chromosome, dubbed 'synIII,' has successfully replaced chromosome 3 of multiple living yeast cells. The researchers pieced together over 250,000 nucleotide bases to accomplish this feat. Dr. Jef Boeke, the lead author of the study, says, 'not only can we make designer changes on a computer, but we can make hundreds of changes through a chromosome and we can put that chromosome into yeast and have a yeast that looks, smells and behaves like a regular yeast, but this yeast is endowed with special properties that normal yeasts don't have.' Work is underway (abstract) to synthesize the remaining 15 chromosomes."
Stats

Video Working with Real-Time Analytics as a Service (Video) 15

Posted by Roblimo from the knowledge-you-might-need-someday-even-if-you-don't-need-it-now dept.
This is wide-ranging interview with Dev Patel and Poulomi Damany of BitYota, an Analytics as a Service startup that works specifically with MongoDB. Open Source? Not yet. But hopefully soon, they say. And why should an IT person or programmer care about marketing-oriented analytics? Because the more you know about functions in your company besides IT (such as finance, investor relations, and -- yes -- marketing), the more valuable you are as an employee. Dev also mentions the two main things he looks for when recruiting for BitYota: "One is intellect, and the other is attitude." He points out that this is not true merely of BitYota, but of any strong startup. This is all good information for any job-seeker hoping to land a spot with a startup -- and for anyone who is happy with where he or she works but hopes to earn promotions and raises, too.
KDE

KDE Releases Calligra Suite 2.8 35

Posted by timothy from the consistently-impressive dept.
It's not just graphics app Krita: user KDE Community writes "The Calligra team is proud and pleased to announce the release of version 2.8 of the Calligra Suite, Calligra Active and the Calligra Office Engine. Major new features in this release are comments support in Author and Words, improved Pivot tables in Sheets, improved stability and the ability to open hyperlinks in Kexi. Flow introduces SVG based stencils and as usual there are many new features in Krita including touch screens support and a wraparound painting mode for the creation of textures and tiles." KDE has also just announced the first beta of its Applications and Platform 4.13.
United States

Study Questions H-1B Policies 361

Posted by samzenpus from the cutting-costs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "One of the arguments for continuing and even expanding the H1-B visa program (pdf) is that it enables highly-skilled immigrants to work in the U.S. and grow the U.S. economy. Counterarguments state that the H1-B visa program does not bring in the 'best and brightest' and is used to drive down wages, particularly in the STEM fields. This Bloomberg article, discussing pending H1-B legislation, quotes some of the salaries of current workers in the U.S. on H1-B visas: $4,800/month and $5,500/month which work out to $57,600/year and $66,000/year; only slightly higher than the average entry-level salaries of newly-graduated engineering or computer science majors."

Comment The cost comparison is off (Score 4, Informative) 403

by neile (#43659847) Attached to: Adobe's Creative Cloud Illustrates How the Cloud Costs You More
The comparison should be made to Adobe CS6 Master Collection which is going for $2,100 on Amazon right now, not the smaller package of CS6 goes for $403.99. Adobe also announced the monthly cost for a single app will be $10/mo. for the first year, not the current $19.99/mo. Similarly, if you are an existing CS3 or higher owner, you can get the first year of everything for $39.99/mo. for the first year. Now I'm not saying whether this is a good or bad change, just pointing out that the summary's numbers aren't accurate.

Comment Re:Same security for all (Score 1) 199

by neile (#41763791) Attached to: Experts Warn About Security Flaws In Airline Boarding Passes

It's not exactly "waved through security". If the airport has PreCheck (not all do) and you are at the PreCheck checkpoint (not all checkpoints are configured for it) then you'd be able to see it in action.

If you qualify for PreCheck for that flight when you get to security you don't have to take your laptop or liquids out of your bag, don't have to take your shoes, belt, or jacket, off, and walk through a metal detector not the porno scanner.Last time I went through security (at Denver International Airport) it took me 30 seconds from the time my boarding card was scanned to the time I was walking out the other end of the checkpoint with my stuff.

Neil

Comment Relevant story from two weeks ago (Score 4, Informative) 503

by neile (#41715191) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Securing a Windows Laptop, For the Windows Newbie?

What free antivirus do you install on windows

Install Windows Security Essentials and you'll be fine. Seriously, it's not like by putting Windows 7 on a computer your house is immediately going to be invaded by zombies dragging every virus or malware known to man. Install WSE (or one of the other recommendations from the above thread), run with standard (not admin) rights, and that's pretty much all you need to do.

Neil

Comment Dell XPS 17 (Score 1) 300

I'm typing this on a Dell XPS 17" laptop that comes with a full keyboard, including a real numeric keypad. Is it Lenovo-quality? No. Does it work just fine? Yes.

Do note that the Dell XPS 17" laptop is large enough that my colleagues nicknamed mine the "schleptop" because it's quite a lot of work to schlep it everywhere.

Neil

Comment You only have to pay $50 (Score 3, Informative) 527

by neile (#39372525) Attached to: Pay the TSA $100 and Bypass Airport Security
And it's not to the TSA. Another spectacular Slashdot story title and summary.

People who have already been screened and approved for the Global Entry ($100) or NEXUS ($50) program are automatically eligible for pre-check. The TSA isn't making (or receiving) any money on this. The money is to pay for the background check and screening done to get into the trusted traveler programs run by customs and immigration.

The TSA is actually being *smart* here. If you've already been checked and interviewed for expedited entry into the country, why *wouldn't* you be trusted for expedited security screening at an airport?

Neil

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