SoylentNews

lhsi writes:

"The Independent will no longer review any children's books that are aimed at a specific gender. Katy Guest, the literary editor for the paper, notes that 'brothers and sisters shared the same toys, books and games, which came in many more colours than just pink and blue, and there was no obvious disintegration of society as a result'. Some publishers, but not all, have previously said they would stop printing books for a specific gender.

'Happily, as the literary editor of The Independent on Sunday, there is something that I can do about this. So I promise now that the newspaper and this website will not be reviewing any book which is explicitly aimed at just girls, or just boys. Nor will The Independent's books section. And nor will the children's books blog at Independent.co.uk. Any Girls' Book of Boring Princesses that crosses my desk will go straight into the recycling pile along with every Great Big Book of Snot for Boys. If you are a publisher with enough faith in your new book that you think it will appeal to all children, we'll be very happy to hear from you. But the next Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen will not come in glittery pink covers. So we'd thank you not to send us such books at all.'"

Papas Fritas writes:

"Time Warner Cable Inc. has stirred anger over its hike in subscription rates for customers and its efforts to extract hefty fees from rivals to air the L.A. Dodgers channel. Now Meg James reports at the LA Times that the city of Los Angeles has sued the cable giant, alleging Time Warner Cable stiffed the city on franchise fees over four years through 2011. The city seeks nearly $10 million in fees, money it said could have helped ease its budget problems during the financial crisis. 'Time Warner owes L.A.'s taxpayers millions of dollars for the privilege of having its franchise,' says City Attorney Michael Feuer. 'This is a day where we are standing up and saying enough is enough.' The 24-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, contends that Time Warner Cable "blatantly refused to live up to its obligations to the city" (PDF) to pay franchise fees to operate its cable network over city-owned rights of way while collecting more than $500 million a year from customers in the city. The city is seeking $9.7 million from Time Warner Cable which includes $2.5 million in franchise and PEG (public, educational and government channel) fees and support for 2008 and 2009, plus another $7.2 million owed for 2010 and 2011.

The lawsuit comes just a few weeks after Time Warner Cable alerted its Southern California customers that it planned to hike rates by an average of about 6% a month for homes that are not covered by a promotional package. Time Warner Cable, in a statement, denied the allegation that it had cheated the city. 'As a major job creator, tax contributor and service provider in the city of Los Angeles, Time Warner Cable is an active and responsible corporate citizen,' the company said in a statement. 'We are disappointed the city has chosen to bring this action, which we strongly believe is without merit.' Jonathan Kramer, a Los Angeles-based telecom attorney and a member of the California chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, said it was 'inevitable that [more] of these types of lawsuits will be filed' and that other cities are considering similar action, but that 'Los Angeles is first to pull the trigger.' 'It's the devil you know,' Kramer said. 'We know Time Warner. But Comcast is much more aggressive when it comes to pushing back (against) local jurisdictions.'"

Anonymous Coward writes:

""MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing platform that anyone can install and run. Decentralization, (...) is the main goal of the project, one that is backed and connected to the GNU project.

So far, MediaGoblin has raised only $3,000 of its $60,000 goal, with the campaign set to end April 14th, (...) that is a date that is soon approaching. The first crowd-sourcing initiative was in October of 2012, so this is not the first crowd-funding initiative the project has launched. This second campaign was clearly spurred on by the PRISM revelations of recent past. Having not noticed any failures to meet 2012's funding campaign, it's very possible the team may reach their goal again, given the intensity of the subject matter."

c0lo writes:

"Wired reports that for the first time ever telescopes all over the world may have a front-row look at a super-massive black hole in the center of our galaxy consuming the G2 gas cloud. While one would think there's enough seats to fully enjoy the spectacle, the reality shows there are so many aspects to test, the available time for the telescopes around the world may be more tightly packed than the space surrounding the black hole

Indeed, the scientists can't anticipate what happens:

1. if the black hole's accretion disk is dense enough, the gas cloud may be heated up to temperatures greater than 10 million degrees, producing X-rays and other radiation that will be visible to our telescopes. The Event Horizon Telescope project would be ready to image the area as the gas it falls into the the black hole, but don't hold your breaths yet: the earliest that this project will be up and running is 2016;
2. however, as recently as a few hundred years ago, the Milky Way's central super-massive black hole was producing much more radiation than today. If this is a sign of a low density accretion disk, it may happen the gas cloud slings around at a minimum distance of only 20 light-hours to the central black hole. Even if this would be the case, there could be around 10,000 solar mass black holes in the Milky Way's central region, so "there's a reasonable chance that one of those might be hit, and that would be absolutely fantastic" said astrophysicist Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany (the one that made the chance discovery of the G2 gas cloud back in 2003)

So, soylent-gents, place your bets: will the G2 score the penalty kick or will it be a close miss? What scenario are you cheering for?"

evilviper writes:

"Lockheed Martin is moving into the energy sector, with their WindProspector system. They are trying to improve upon anemometer-based surveys for wind turbines using LIDAR technology (commonly found around airports) for more accurate measurements. The improve siting could offer a substantial performance improvement for future wind farms."

GungnirSniper writes:

"From the lighter-fare-for-the-weekend department:

Dicephalic parapagus twins, or a single body with two heads, were born in India on March 12th. India.com reports "the twins have a slim chance of survival even after they are operated upon" and the parents have yet to name their conjoined daughters.

[It] may not be possible to separate the twins because they share the same body. "The baby girl has two heads, two necks and two spines, but only one body, one lung for each head, two separate oesophaguses and trachea, a single stomach and heart. Most of the vital organs are shared," said Dr Amit Gupta, medical director of Sonepat's Cygnus JK Hindu Hospital, where the conjoined twins were born.

The parents are poor and did not have an ultrasound until the last trimester.

It was on February 24 that the patient came to meet me and was into her 8th month of pregnancy. The mother had not gone through any tests earlier as she couldn't afford an ultrasound test. And it was then we broke the news to the family that there are conjoined twins to be born, and that their babies hadn't completely separated" gynaecologist Dr Shikha Malik said.

While having a single set of organs for conjoined twins does put more strain on the body, there are examples of thriving dicephalic parapagus twins, such as Abby and Brittany Hensel. That pair, now age 24, had a reality show on US TV channel TLC in 2012."

Subsentient writes:

"I've been writing C for quite some time, but I never followed good conventions I'm afraid, and I never payed much attention to the optimization tricks of the higher C programmers. Sure, I use const when I can, I use the pointer methods for manual string copying, I even use register for all the good that does with modern compilers, but now, I'm trying to write a C-string handling library for personal use, but I need speed, and I really don't want to use inline ASM. So, I am wondering, what would other Soylenters do to write efficient, pure, standards-compliant C?"

lhsi writes:

"A dispute into the future of Bletchley Park has been in the news recently. On the site there are actually two museums; the Bletchley Park site and the National Museum of Computing area, which includes the Colossus rebuild, however there isn't a single ticket to gain access to both.

Sue Black, who started a campaign to save the site in 2008, believes that mediation between the two trusts is essential to the success of Bletchley Park as a whole.

'They have all seemed to have the long term interest of Bletchley Park's future in mind and to want the best for the whole site. Why then are we in the situation we find ourselves in today where the two trusts seem to be at loggerheads?'

She resigned from being a trustee after failing to get the two trusts to agree to external mediation. She also believes in having more women involved at a high level.

'Would having a few more women involved to encourage communication and collaboration rather than competition been a good idea? I think so. Having a gender balance can make a difference in these types of situations.'

The National Museum of Computing wants the dispute resolved quickly and thoroughly, and proposed an Independent Review to the Bletchley Park Trust, however have not yet received a response.

The Bletchley Park Trust have claimed to offer a good deal to the National Museum of Computing regarding joint ticketing, however it "included a section implicitly questioning the ownership of the Colossus Rebuild", and the museum did not accept an "unnecessary and provocative statement"."

FuckBeta writes:

"Guido Stepko reports - In an GOLEM interview at CEBIT 2014 fair, Frank Kuypers, technical account manager at INTEL corp., proudly presented a new feature in INTEL processors, called "hooks", beginning with the new 2014 "Merrifield" 64 bit SoC chip generation.

In the Intel network only mobiles with certain Android versions are allowed to use certain functionalities. If you then replace your Android version, e.g. by a free Cyanogenmod Android kernel, not only some chips would stop working, e.g. LTE/UMTS, but also mails from your employer would be blinded out, because now the processor itself would 'classify' the new software as 'risk'.

Now, beginning with the new 2014 power efficient mobile "Merrifield" processor generation, this functionality will be used to lock the processor for certain OS'es or OS versions. Whether there will be a SDK or use of this 'functionality' will be kept a secret, still is undecided, Kuypers said.

Ryan O'Dell sees a potential abuse of the technology: "You'll buy a computer from a shop with Windows OS and not be able to change to Linux or another OS in the future. You may be able to buy the processor unlocked for a sum. With mobile phones/tablets it can be worse with phone networks also potentially have a lock-in. It's a disaster for the consumer"

Google translation from German: (Google)

An anonymous coward writes:

"Mozilla is using work on it's next generation layout engine, Servo, to fine tune a new language used for writing that layout engine. The new language, called Rust, started as a personal project of Greydon Hoare and has since grown to be sponsored by Mozilla and Samsung. From the article:

The Rust language will power Mozilla's new browser, Servo, and its big selling point is efficiency. Because C++ crashes when it runs into memory allocation issues, it weakens any browser that uses the language. Mozilla designed Rust to be superior to C++ this way, more easily isolating tasks and promote a process known as "work stealing," which is when tasks from an overloaded processor are shifted over to another one.

Rust is a general purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language developed by Mozilla Research. It is designed to be a "safe, concurrent, practical language", supporting pure-functional, concurrent-actor, imperative-procedural, and object-oriented styles."

c0lo writes:

"After more than 35 years during which nobody seems to know about the fate of the Death Star architect responsible with the vents design, recently an open letter (which seems to have been written only weeks after the event) surfaced to offer an insight on both the engineering challenges as well as organizational challenges a technical minded person faces while working for a narrow-minded Empire.

The letter also raises some interesting points on potential in-fights within the upper management circles and possibly an early whistle-blowing attempt, force-choked instead of being protected and followed up; the allegations may well be the reason for which we got to read this latter so late and why nobody seems to know what happened with an otherwise pretty competent battle-station engineer and architect."

lhsi writes:

"The Atlantic looked at a recent update from the developers of the game Desktop Dungeons to discuss problems with gender bias in gaming, asking 'can a work be racist or sexist if its creator doesn't mean for it to be?'

The developers of the game had recently been adding female character art to their game with the intention that they would be "adventurers first and runway models second." While actively trying to avoid doing everything the 'simple' way, they came into some problems due to subconscious shorthands creeping in.

"This adjustment turned out to be startlingly non-trivial - you'd think that a bunch of supposedly conscious, mindful individuals would instantly be able to nail a 'good female look' (bonus points for having a woman on our crew, right?), but huge swathes of our artistic language tended to be informed by sexist and one-dimensional portrayals. We regularly surprised ourselves with how much we took for granted.'"

evilviper writes "The US Department of Commerce announced, ahead of the ITU conference, that they will begin to relinquish their remaining control over ICANN, the governing body that decides the policies and the direction of the Internet. Their stated goal is to make it independent, to ensure that no other government or international agencies are able to take charge, in the face of anti-US opinion.

This comes a year after the ITU, "the United Nations' notoriously dubious telecommunications arm", insisted on taking control of the Internet, itself, which many fear they will use in an attempt to stifle Internet growth, benefiting other telecom interests."

nobbis writes "Major Tim Peake, who will spend six months on the International Space Station in 2015 has opened a competition to name his mission, the name will also be incorporated into the mission logo.

Rosita Suenson of the European Space Agency claims that the competition is designed to engage the public, "We want people to feel part of Tim's mission". Major Peake adds "The ISS is a fantastic research laboratory so I am trying to get people engaged in what we are doing on board the space station in terms of the science, the educational outreach and the knowledge that we gain from the research we do. I want them to come up with an inspirational name for the mission."

The BBC gives some early favorites including "Beagle 3" and "Starman".

The competition is open to all citizens (and subjects) of ESA member countries, meaning the entry should be easy to pronounce in European languages."

lubricus writes:

"This past Friday (March 14, 2014), in advance of ICANN meeting in April, the US announced its attention to relinquish control of the DNS root zone to the global community. Although we can speculate as to the probable cause (*cough* NSAspying! *cough*), most international observers agree that this is a good move for the internet overall."