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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:51 | Votes:109

posted by n1 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the sport-needs-more-statistics dept.

The Daily Mail and Metro are reporting:

Atletico Madrid assistant coach Germán Burgos became the first person to use a Google Glass application to help his team to victory on Sunday night.

Burgos took to the dugout at the Coliseum Alfonso Perez wearing a pair of the innovative glasses which Google have developed alongside the the Liga de Futbol Profesional (LFP) to allow coaches to receive live statistics from the match.

The new technology meant the Atletico coach could keep up with 'general statistics', 'game building', 'defence' and 'shots' all while watching their side cruise to a 2-0 win.

posted by mrcoolbp on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the details-are-important dept.

I would like to clarify some points on the in-progress submission and voting process.

  • Ideally the name should be available in .com .org and .net
  • If not, we will still accept the submission
  • Suggestions left as comments on this site will not be added
  • If you are unable to submit a name through the formal process as a last resort the name can be submitted to suggestions@soylentnews.org or you can pester a staff member on IRC via a private message
  • Submissions close on Saturday at 06:50 UTC so I suggest getting them in by Friday at the latest

If you plan on making a submission then I also recommend you read the original article with full instructions. Unfortunately, if you did not register to vote before April 12, you are out of luck for this vote.

If you want more information about bounces, plain text email, or voting read this comment by audioguy.

posted by n1 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-good-for-business-is-good-for-everyone dept.

ProPublica reports:

Return-free filing might allow tens of millions of Americans to file their taxes for free and in minutes. Or that, under proposals authored by several federal lawmakers, it would be voluntary, using information the government already receives from banks and employers and that taxpayers could adjust. Or that the concept has been endorsed by Presidents Obama and Reagan and is already a reality in some parts of Europe.

Sounds great, except to Intuit, maker of Turbotax who last year spent more than $2.6 million on lobbying. Some of which was spent on four bills related to the issue, federal lobbying records show.

posted by n1 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @09:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the time-for-new-legislation dept.

Although Health Canada still has no ruling on the hazards, or lack thereof, of e-cigarettes, it's being reported that airline personnel are confused about the rules surrounding the vapor creating devices. In a recent story posted to the CBC a passenger complained when personnel aboard her flight did nothing to stop a man smoking, or vaping as they call it, on the flight.

Being old enough to remember being trapped on a 12 hour flight in the early 80's full of smokers, I have no desire to go back to the days where people with addictions are allowed to determine what the acceptable chemicals, odors, substances and level of air quality others must put up with should be. [I think] the same rules that apply to regular cigarettes should apply to e-cigarettes.

posted by n1 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @08:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-mile-in-someone-else's-shoes dept.

The Independent is reporting that Nigel Evans, a British MP recently cleared of sexual assault charges, has said he regretted previously supporting cuts to legal aid.

He said he was stunned to learn he would have to pay his legal fees even if he was acquitted plus value added tax.

Tough new rules on the amount of cash acquitted defendants could claim back were passed in 2011 as the Ministry of Justice sought to trim the legal aid budget.

Bill Waddington, the chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors' Association, said: "It is interesting it takes something like this for MPs to realise that only two years ago they actually voted for this change against vociferous opposition from the legal community."

posted by n1 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-dont-need-no-education dept.

Bloomberg reports:

Dozens of schools have seen drops of more than 10 percent in enrollment, according to Moody's. As faculty and staff have been cut and programs closed, some students have faced a choice between transferring or finishing degrees that may have diminished value.

The number of private four-year colleges that have closed or were acquired doubled from about five a year before 2008 to about 10 in the four years through 2011, according to a study last year by researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, citing federal data.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has predicted that as many as half of the more than 4,000 universities and colleges in the U.S. may fail in the next 15 years.

Soaring student debt, competition from online programs and poor job prospects for graduates are cited as the main causes.

posted by n1 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the too-good-to-be-true dept.

Ars Technica, among others are reporting that the first part of the TrueCrypt audit crowdfunded last year is complete. While several vulnerabilities were found, nothing on the level of a backdoor has turned up. The report itself is located here(pdf).

The following vulnerabilities were found:

  1. Weak Volume Header key derivation algorithm (Medium)
  2. Sensitive information might be paged out from kernel stacks (Medium)
  3. Multiple issues in the bootloader decompressor (Medium)
  4. Windows kernel driver uses memset() to clear sensitive data (Medium)
  5. TC_IOCTL_GET_SYSTEM_DRIVE_DUMP_CONFIG kernel pointer disclosure (Low)
  6. IOCTL_DISK_VERIFY integer overflow (Low)
  7. TC_IOCTL_OPEN_TEST multiple issues (Low)
  8. MainThreadProc() integer overflow (Low)
  9. MountVolume() device check bypass (Informational)
  10. GetWipePassCount() / WipeBuffer() can cause BSOD (Informational)
  11. EncryptDataUnits() lacks error handling (Informational)
posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 15 2014, @04:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the Sins-of-the-Father-Visited-upon-the-Son dept.

The Washington Post reports that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who are expecting refunds are instead getting letters informing them that because of a debt they never knew about often a debt incurred by their parents the government has confiscated their check sometimes on debts 20 or 30 years old. For example, when Mary Grice was 4, back in 1960, her father died, leaving her mother with five children to raise. Until the kids turned 18, Sadie Grice got survivor benefits from Social Security to help feed and clothe them. Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family it's not sure who in 1977. After 37 years of silence, four years after Sadie Grice died, the government is coming after her daughter. "It was a shock," says Grice, 58. "What incenses me is the way they went about this. They gave me no notice, they can't prove that I received any overpayment, and they use intimidation tactics, threatening to report this to the credit bureaus."

The Treasury Department has intercepted $1.9 billion in tax refunds already this year $75 million of that on debts delinquent for more than 10 years, says Jeffrey Schramek, assistant commissioner of the department's debt management service. The aggressive effort to collect old debts started three years ago the result of a single sentence tucked into the farm bill lifting the 10-year statute of limitations on old debts to Uncle Sam. The Federal Trade Commission, on its Web site, advises Americans that "family members typically are not obligated to pay the debts of a deceased relative from their own assets." But Social Security officials say that if children indirectly received assistance from public dollars paid to a parent, the children's money can be taken, no matter how long ago any overpayment occurred. Many of the taxpayers whose refunds have been taken say they've been unable to contest the confiscations because of the cost, because Social Security cannot provide records detailing the original overpayment, and because the citizens, following advice from the IRS to keep financial documents for just three years, had long since trashed their own records. More than 1,200 appeals have been filed on the old cases but only about 10 percent of taxpayers have won those appeals. "The government took the money first and then they sent us the letter," says Brenda Samonds.." We could never get one sentence from them explaining why the money was taken."

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 15 2014, @02:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the GNO-Love-for-GNOME dept.

Michael Larabel writes at Phoronix that the GNOME Foundation is running into a budget shortfall and funds are becoming very tight. According to Larabel one of the reasons the Foundation got into this situation is through its Outreach Program for Women (OPW) which had around 30 interns for their most recent cycle and managing the program (and funds) for a number of other participating organizations. The GNOME Foundation staff and board fell behind in their processes with being overwhelmed by administering OPW. "Making matters worse, in their 2014 budget they made assumptions based upon the previous year's incomes and expenditures, which were more optimistic. There's also the matter of payments from GNOME sponsors and others owing the GNOME Foundation money being rather fluid or coming in late."

To rectify their budget shortfall, the Foundation is going through with its invoicing of conference sponsors, more pro-actively following up on unpaid invoices, better invoicing OPW sponsoring, increasing their general fundraising efforts, and taking other efforts. The Foundation also voted last week to "freeze Foundation spending which is not essential to the running of the Foundation. By keeping expenditures to a minimum while some delayed revenue is regained, the board aims to have things back to normal within a few months." Those wishing to support the GNOME Foundation can figure out various donation means by becoming a friend of GNOME.

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 15 2014, @01:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the Temporary-Reprieve dept.

Bloomberg reports that Toyota's vision for the future includes replacing (some of) its robots with humans.

While it may sound nonsensical, the image starts to make sense when considering some aphorisms on automation (for example, "Computers have enabled people to make more mistakes faster than almost any invention in history, with the possible exception of tequila and hand guns") and the recent recalls of millions of cars.

It's far from suggesting that robots were causing the faults or that, by replacing robots by humans, the company will diminish the rate of reproducing the faults with high efficiency. However Toyota has had a culture for quality for quite a long time and seems to have identified a cause for the lack of quality (which caused the recalls) in the distance the computers and automation place between the workers and the product they manufacture.

Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn't get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. In an area [...] at the forging division of Toyota's Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap by 10% and shortening the production line 96% from its length three years ago. 760 workers take part in 96 percent of the production process at its Motomachi plant in Japan Toyota introduced multiple lines dedicated to manual labor in each of Toyota's factories in its home country

"We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again," Kawai said. "To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine." Kawai, 65, started with Toyota during the era of Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System envied by the auto industry for decades with its combination of efficiency and quality. That means Kawai has been living most of his life adhering to principles of kaizen, or continuous improvement, and monozukuri, which translates to the art of making things.

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the Happy-Little-Tß dept.

FiveThirtyEight provides us with A Statistical Analysis of the Work of Bob Ross.

From the article:

As a consummate teacher, Bob Ross guided fans along as he painted "happy trees, "almighty mountains," and "fluffy clouds" over the course of his 11-year television career on his PBS show, "The Joy of Painting." In total, Ross painted 381 works on the show, relying on a distinct set of elements, scenes and themes, and thereby providing thousands of data points.

Statistical analysis of each episode follows.

So, if you too are stuck dealing with spreadsheet manipulation today. Have a moment of Happy Trees.

I'll call this one Clyde.

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 15 2014, @08:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the Backpedaling-Furiously dept.

In an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times, Jenny McCarthy claims she is not anti-vaccine. "I believe in the importance of a vaccine program and I believe parents have the right to choose one poke per visit. I've never told anyone to not vaccinate. Should a child with the flu receive six vaccines in one doctor visit? Should a child with a compromised immune system be treated the same way as a robust, healthy child? Shouldn't a child with a family history of vaccine reactions have a different plan? Or at least the right to ask questions?"

However Jeffrey Kluger, who interviewed McCarthy in 2009, responds in Time Magazine that McCarthy believes vaccines cause autism, that they are related to OCD, ADHD and other physical and behavioral ills, that they are overprescribed, teeming with toxins, poorly regulated and that the only reason we keep forcing them into the sweet, pristine immune systems of children is because doctors, big pharma and who-knows what-all sinister forces want it that way. "Jenny, as outbreaks of measles, mumps and whooping cough continue to appear in the U.S.-most the result of parents refusing to vaccinate their children because of the scare stories passed around by anti-vaxxers like you-it's just too late to play cute with the things you've said. You are either floridly, loudly, uninformedly antivaccine or you are the most grievously misunderstood celebrity of the modern era. Science almost always prefers the simple answer, because that's the one that's usually correct. Your quote trail is far too long-and you have been far too wrong-for the truth not to be obvious."

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 15 2014, @05:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the What-me-worry? dept.

The Microsoft Board of Directors is being sued for $731M.
That is the amount MSFT was fined by regulators for its violation of an agreement it made in 2009 to enable users to choose a browser.This was the largest ever antitrust fine against MS. It was the first time the European Commission, the EU's antitrust authority, handed down a fine to a company for failing to meet its obligations.

Shareholder Kim Barovic is also unhappy with the ongoing lack of transparency of M$ management in dealing with the matter and has filed suit. Barovic says she asked Microsoft's board to fully investigate how that mistake occurred and to take action against any directors or executives that had not performed their duties. She says Microsoft replied that it found no evidence of a breach of fiduciary duty by any current or former executives or directors.

posted by mrcoolbp on Tuesday April 15 2014, @03:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the please-no-not-the-bacon dept.

US bacon prices are rising after a deadly virus spreads through farms killing millions of piglets. A pound of bacon averaged $5.46 a few months ago. "That's 13 percent more than a year ago."

This is also being reported by The CS Monitor and CBS.

posted by n1 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @12:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the watching-the-watchers dept.

The UK's Open Rights Group is improving its website censorship monitoring platform Blocked.org.uk.

ORG is running a project to end the imposition of web blocking by ISPs and the Government.

Since the start of the year ORG's community of technical volunteers have been turning blocked.org.uk into an automated platform for censorship detection, reporting and research.