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Submission + - IEEE-USA opposes efforts to expand the H-1B visa program (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: IEEE USA says H-1B visas are a tool used to avoid paying U.S. wages. "For every visa used by Google to hire a talented non-American for $126,000, ten Americans are replaced by outsourcing companies paying their H-1B workers $65,000," says the current IEEE USA president, writing with the past president and president-elect. The outsourcing companies, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy in 2014 "used 21,695 visas, or more than 25 percent of all private-sector H-1B visas used that year. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Uber, for comparison, used only 1,763 visas, or 2 percent," they say. They do support expanding green card programs, stating "America was built by green card holders, not guest workers."

Submission + - FCC Chair Wants Carriers To Block Robocalls From Spoofed Numbers (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FCC in 2015 made it clear that voice service providers can offer call blocking tools to customers, but commissioners said at the time that more needed to be done about Caller ID spoofing. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has now scheduled a preliminary vote for March 23 on new rules designed to solve the problem. "One particularly pernicious category of robocalls is spoofed robocalls—i.e., robocalls where the caller ID is faked, hiding the caller’s true identity," the proposal says. "Fraudsters bombard consumers’ phones at all hours of the day with spoofed robocalls, which in some cases lure consumers into scams (e.g., when a caller claims to be collecting money owed to the Internal Revenue Service) or lead to identity theft." The proposed rules would let providers "block spoofed robocalls when the spoofed Caller ID can’t possibly be valid." Providers would be able to block numbers that aren't valid under the North American Numbering Plan and block valid numbers that haven't been allocated to any phone company. They'd also be able to block valid numbers that have been allocated to a phone company but haven't been assigned to a subscriber. The proposal would also codify the FCC's previous guidance that phone companies can block calls when requested by the spoofed number’s subscriber. The upcoming vote on March 23 is for a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which means the rules won't take effect immediately. The FCC uses NPRMs to seek comment on proposals before issuing final rules.

Submission + - Tesla Unveils Residential 'Solar Roof' With Updated Battery Storage System (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla will build and sell its own line of solar panels with integrated batteries, the company announced at a press event at Universal Studios in LA, today. The Powerwall 2 will allow residential homeowners to replace their entire roof with solar panels and an updated Powerwall 2 battery system, making it much simpler for homes to be entirely powered by solar power. The roof is made of a textured glass tile with integrated solar cells. The roofs look "as good or better" than conventional roofs, according to Musk. They look like normal roofing tiles from the ground, but are completely transparent to the sun. The tiles are hydrographically printed, which, Musk says, makes each one a "special snowflake tile," and no two roofs will be the same. "You can take any two roofs that look like that and they will be different — because they are different," said Musk. There are a number of different versions of solar panels: Textured Glass Tile, Slate Glass Tile, Tuscan Glass Tile, and Smooth Glass Tile. Tesla says its glass tiles are much more durable than conventional roof tile — something that’s important in areas with risk of hail. The products are a "joint collaboration" between SolarCity and Tesla, according to SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive. The Powerwall 2 can store 14 kWh of energy, with a 5 kW continuous power draw, and 7 kW peak. The battery is warranted for unlimited power cycles for up to 10 years. It can be floor or wall mounted, inside or outside. It can be used for load shifting or back-up power.

Submission + - SPAM: The Air Force Now Plans To Keep The A-10 Warthog Flying Indefinitely 5

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The A-10 Thunderbolt AKA “Warthog” is a flying farm tractor. Slow, brutish, but reliable as the tide and endearingly indestructible and incredibly effective. Strategists have feared that the jet will be axed in favor of funding the F-35, but the U.S. Air Force recently confirmed that it plans to keep the A-10 flying “indefinitely.”

While the Air Force is theoretically supposed to be diverting the A-10’s operating expenses to feed the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the people in charge are now planning to keep the plane running.

“They have re-geared up, we’ve turned on the depot line, we’re building it back up in capacity and supply chain,” Air Force Materiel Command chief Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski told AviationWeek in a interview. “Our command, anyway, is approaching this as another airplane that we are sustaining indefinitely.”

While the beancounters and product planners are trying to push the A-10 off the board, Materiel Command is going to keep on keeping the planes in peak condition, which will give the A-10 it’s best chance of proving its worth over and over again.

And it seems to be working– the A-10 posted a five percent increase in its availability rate from 2014 to 2015, and the Air Force seems to keep postponing its demise.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SpaceX Says Helium Loading Issue May Have Caused Falcon 9 Explosion (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nearly two months after a September 1 accident on the launch pad, SpaceX says it is nearing the conclusion of its investigation. Although the company has yet to identify the "exact root cause" of the accident that occurred during a static fire test just prior to a planned launch of a communications satellite, the investigation has reached an "advanced state." Shortly after the fiery incident, the company focused on a breach in the cryogenic helium system of the rocket's upper stage liquid oxygen tank. "Attention has continued to narrow to one of the three composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) inside the LOX tank," the company stated in an update released Friday afternoon. "Through extensive testing in Texas, SpaceX has shown that it can re-create a COPV failure entirely through helium loading conditions. These conditions are mainly affected by the temperature and pressure of the helium being loaded." SpaceX intends to continue work to identify the precise cause of the accident and to improve its method of loading helium onto the rocket to prevent a repeat failure. The company also plans to resume testing Falcon 9 rocket stages at its facility in McGregor, Texas, soon. By taking this step in early November, SpaceX maintains that it is on track to resume flight operations of its Falcon 9 rocket before the end of 2016.

Submission + - A Radiologist Has the Fastest Home Internet In the US (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Jason Koebler via Motherboard has interviewed James Busch — a radiologist and owner of "the first 10 Gbps residential connection in the United States" — at a coffee shop in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Motherboard reports: "For reference, the Federal Communications Commission officially classifies 'broadband' as 25 Mbps. His connection is 400 times faster than that. Busch found a way to make good use of his 1 Gbps connection, and now he's found a use for 10 Gbps, too. 'An X-ray averages around 200 megabytes, then you have PET scans and mammograms—3D mammograms are 10 gig files, so they’re enormous,' Busch said. 'We go through terabytes a year in storage. We’ve calculated out that we save about 7 seconds an exam, which might seem like, ‘Who cares,’ but when you read 20,000 or 30,000 exams every year, it turns out to be something like 10 days of productivity you’re saving just from a bandwidth upgrade.' While 10 gig connections sound excessive at the moment, Busch says his family quickly started using all of its 1 gig bandwidth. 'We ballooned into that gig within eight or nine months. With my kids watching Netflix instead of TV, with me working, we did utilize that bandwidth,' he said. 'There were situations where my daughter would be FaceTiming and the others would be streaming on the 4K TVs and they’d start screaming at each other about hogging the bandwidth. We don’t see that at 10 gigs.' So why does Busch have a 10 Gbps and the rest of us don’t? For one, 10 Gbps offerings are rare and scattered in mostly rural communities that have decided to build their own internet networks. Most companies that have the technology offer gigabit connections (a still cutting-edge technology only available in a handful of cities) at affordable prices and 10 Gbps connections at comparatively exorbitant ones. In Chattanooga, 1 gig connections are $69.99 per month; 10 gig connections are $299. Thus far, 10 Gbps connections are available in Chattanooga; parts of southern Vermont; Salisbury, North Carolina; and parts of Detroit and Minneapolis. But besides Busch, I couldn’t find any other people in the United States who have signed up for one. EPB, the Chattanooga government-owned power utility that runs the network, confirmed that Busch is the city’s only 10 Gbps residential customer. Rocket Fiber, which recently began offering 10 Gbps in Detroit, told me that it has 'no customers set in stone,' but that it’s in talks with prospective ones. Representatives for US Internet in Minneapolis and Fibrant in Salisbury did not respond to my requests for comment. Michel Guite, president of the Vermont Telephone Company, told me his network has no 10 Gbps customers, either."

Submission + - SPAM: 3D printed Camera - possible use in surveillance

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: German engineers have created a camera no bigger than a grain of salt that could change the future of health imaging — and clandestine surveillance

Using 3D printing, researchers from the University of Stuttgart built a three-lens camera, and fit it onto the end of an optical fibre the width of two hairs

Such technology could be used as minimally-intrusive endoscopes for exploring inside the human body, the engineers reported in the journal Nature Photonics

The compound lens of the camera is just 100 micrometres (0.1 millimetres) wide, and 120 micrometres with its casing

It could also be deployed in virtually invisible security monitors, or mini-robots with "autonomous vision"

The compound lens can also be printed onto image sensor other than optical fibres, such as those used in digital cameras

[spam URL stripped]...
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:prior art? (Score 1) 183

by Robert Pyle (#51520953) Attached to: Microsoft Patents A Modular PC With Stackable Components
Indeed - How is this even patent-able? If the various bus specs over the years have not been modular, whatever were they?? I have added modules to my systems ever since the old days when I swore to never buy an Apple product because of the closed architecture. I have a card and a drive sitting on my desk waiting to be installed - and BOTH are certainly modules (well they are definitely not discrete components). {rant} I thought a module was an integrated collection of components that could be added to other modules within a system. It's all the fault of the English language! No absolutes and multiple meanings for the same word in different contexts. It's a miracle that we communicate at all! {/rant}

Submission + - Editing Genes In Human Embryos Doesn't Mean Designer Babies

Submitted by TheAlexKnapp
TheAlexKnapp writes: Dr. Kathy Niakan, who's leading the scientific team that just got the go-ahead to edit genes in human embryos, explains to Forbes contributor JV Chamary why their work won't lead to designer babies. The genes they're looking at, she says, are unique to the human embryo and the work's purpose is to understand early development. "We can use this new method that’s extremely precise and efficient to ask questions about early development that has profound importance for stem cell biology, and for our understanding of why some embryos fail to thrive."

Submission + - Camless Internal Combustion and the Digital Age (hackaday.com)

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: The internal combustion engine is amazing, and it continues to evolve. Carburetors gave way to fuel injection, and a computer now monitors all kinds of sensors to ensure these engines operate at peak efficiency. But there is one thing that has remained largely unchanged: the cam shaft. This is a device responsible for mechanically timing the operation of the cylinders. It's possible to build an engine that uses digitally controlled actuators instead of a camshaft to decide when each cylinder should fire. These exist as prototypes — we have the technology so why aren't we building with it? The answer is that change is hard, and as with the carburetor it could take an outside force (in that case mandatory efficiency benchmarks) to get automobile manufacturers to wager a bet on new technology.

Submission + - 2016's first batch of anti-science education bills arrive in Oklahoma (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's still January and we're already seeing the first anti-science bills of 2016 going through the Oklahoma legislature. The state's lawmakers fight over this every year, and it looks like this year won't be any different. "The Senate version of the bill (PDF) is by State Senator Josh Brecheen, a Republican. It is the fifth year in a row he's introduced a science education bill after announcing he wanted "every publicly funded Oklahoma school to teach the debate of creation vs. evolution." This year's version omits any mention of specific areas of science that could be controversial. Instead, it simply prohibits any educational official from blocking a teacher who wanted to discuss the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories.

The one introduced in the Oklahoma House (PDF) is more traditional. Billed as a "Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act" (because freedom!), it spells out a whole host of areas of science its author doesn't like: 'The Legislature further finds that the teaching of some scientific concepts including but not limited to premises in the areas of biology, chemistry, meteorology, bioethics, and physics can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on some subjects such as, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.'"

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