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Blackmoore writes with an article from Ars Technica:

Philae was supposed to have anchored itself to Comet 67P with a pair of harpoons, but those harpoons didn’t fire on touchdown. Philae actually rebounded away from the comet (67P has a small but appreciable amount of gravity, although its escape velocity is only 0.5 meters per second). It was during the first of two "bounces" that Rosetta’s OSIRIS imager captured a series of frames showing the lander’s parabolic journey across the comet’s face. The exact location of Philae’s final resting place remains as yet undetermined.

European Space Agency (ESA) posted pictures.

A sad end for the lander that could? Or just a pause in the story?

AnonTechie writes an article from stanford.edu:

Stanford research reaffirms that right-to-carry gun laws are connected with an increase in violent crime. This debunks – with the latest empirical evidence – earlier claims that more guns actually lead to less crime.

While there is no federal law on concealed-carry permits, all 50 states have passed laws allowing citizens to carry certain concealed firearms in public, either without a permit or after obtaining a permit from local government or law enforcement.

Recently published scholarship updates the empirical evidence on this issue. Stanford law Professor John J. Donohue III, Stanford law student Abhay Aneja and doctoral student Alexandria Zhang from Johns Hopkins University were the co-authors of the study.

[Abstract]: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2443681

AnonTechie writes:

The A.M. Turing Award is often called the Nobel Prize of computer science. Now, thanks to Google’s largess, it will be a Nobel-level prize financially: $1 million.

The quadrupling of the prize money, announced on Thursday by the Association for Computing Machinery, the professional organization that administers the award, is intended to elevate the prominence and recognition of computer science. The move can be seen as another sign of the boom times in technology.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Research articles published in scientific journals are routinely backed by studies which show statistical significance with a p-value less than 0.05 (or sometimes 0.01), i.e. less than five (or one) percent probability that the null hypothesis is correct. By implication, the data shows a greater than 95 (or 99) percent chance that the alternative hypothesis proposed by the researchers is correct. It was noticed a long time ago, however, that it's quite possible for an incorrect or even outlandish hypothesis to be validated as statistically significant, for the same reason that an avid poker player will occasionally draw a three-of-a-kind in five-card draw; low probability events sometimes happen. Or, as Richard Feynman once told a roomful of CalTech freshmen:

Andrew Gelman and Eric Loken take a crack at the conundrum of statistical significance in an essay published in American Scientist. The authors note that the problem of false statistical significance is well known in the scientific community, and is particularly likely to surface if researchers slice and dice their data every which way until they find something that appears to be statistically significant, a phenomenom which has come to be known as "p-hacking".

Even when researchers are well-intentioned and do not (consciously) engage in p-hacking, though, studies are susceptible to false significance. The authors discuss several examples of published papers that claimed rather questionable results based on experimental data. In one, a Cornell professor found evidence for extra-sensory perception (ESP) in college students when visualizing erotic images (but not for non-erotic ones). In another, researchers studying the effect of menstrual cycles and female voting patterns concluded that single women were more liberal (and hence more likely to vote for Barack Obama in 2012) during ovulation, while married women were more conservative (and more likely to vote for Mitt Romney) during ovulation. The effect of the menstrual cycle was shown to be huge (a 17 percentage point swing among conservative women). Gelman, who happens to have studied the behavior of American voters in some detail, called B.S. on this result.

Gelman and Loken pick apart these studies, noting that the researchers could have just as convincingly concocted opposite or different hypotheses if the data had turned another way.

The authors conclude:

So it turns out that even some of the 53 percent of statistics that weren't made up on the spot may be on slippery ground.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Josh Planos writes at The Atlantic that the isolated village of Hogewey on the outskirts of Amsterdam has been dubbed “Dementia Village” because it is home to residents who are only admitted if they’re categorized as having severe cases of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. "There are no wards, long hallways, or corridors at the facility," writes Planos. "Residents live in groups of six or seven to a house, with one or two caretakers. Perhaps the most unique element of the facility—apart from the stealthy “gardener” caretakers—is its approach toward housing. Hogeway features 23 uniquely stylized homes, furnished around the time period when residents’ short-term memories stopped properly functioning. There are homes resembling the 1950s, 1970s, and 2000s, accurate down to the tablecloths, because it helps residents feel as if they’re home."

In Holland, everyone pays into the state health care system during their working years, with the money then disbursed to pay for later-in-life expenses - and that means living in Hogewey does not cost any more than a traditional nursing home. The inspiration came about in 1992, when Yvonne van Amerongen and another member of staff at a traditional nursing home both had their own mothers die, being glad that their elderly parents had died quickly and had not had to endure hospital-like care. A series of research and brainstorming sessions in 1993 found that humans choose to surround and interact with other like-minded people of similar backgrounds and experiences; the arrangement at Hogewey provides this by ensuring that residents with similar backgrounds continue to live closely together. On a physical level, residents at Hogewey require fewer medications; they eat better and they live longer. On a mental level, they also seem to have more joy. "The people here keep their independence, as much as they can have of it, and they stay activ," says Theo Visser. "Here they still have a life. It's not the sort of slow, quiet death you get in other places. Here everyone feels at home."

shortscreen writes:

In July, Yasha Levine reported on a number of apparent conflicts of interest concerning the Tor project and those who promote it as a means of protecting one's anonymity online. In addition, evidence is presented that Tor users are actively being surveiled by the NSA, including a leaked NSA document noting the opportunity presented by this "critical mass" of targets. A follow up article reveals the hostile response from some Tor advocates.

Recently we saw law enforcement exercise their capability to identify and shutdown sites hidden via Tor.

AnonTechie writes:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there.

"Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," the conservative president said in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of Muslim leaders from Latin America. "Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast," Erdogan said. Erdogan said that Ankara was even prepared to build a mosque at the site mentioned by the Genoese explorer.

"I would like to talk about it to my Cuban brothers. A mosque would go perfectly on the hill today," the Turkish leader said.

History books say that Columbus set foot on the American continent in 1492 as he was seeking a new maritime route to India. A tiny minority of Muslim scholars have recently suggested a prior Muslim presence in the Americas, although no pre-Columbian ruin of an Islamic structure has ever been found.

http://news.yahoo.com/erdogan-says-muslims-not-columbus-discovered-americas-162759161.html

isostatic writes:

A British five year old has passed the MCP exam, proving he's both a Minesweeper Consultant as well as a Solitaire Expert. His family pretty much agree that it's just a matter of memorising the multiple choice answers: The hardest challenge was explaining the language of the test to a five-year-old. But he seemed to pick it up and has a very good memory.

When you are looking for an employee, do you look at pieces of paper that a five year old can get from memorising a few answers, or do you trust references and resumes?

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Longtime Debian contributor Tollef Fog Heen has announced his resignation from the Debian systemd maintainer team. His announcement states that "the load of the continued attacks is just becoming too much."

He has since written a detailed blog article surrounding the circumstances of his resignation. As he puts it,

I've been a DD for almost 14 years, I should be able to weather any storm, shouldn't I? It turns out that no, the mountain does get worn down by the rain. It's not a single hurtful comment here and there. There's a constant drum about this all being some sort of conspiracy and there are sometimes flares where people wish people involved in systemd would be run over by a bus or just accusations of incompetence.

This is yet another dramatic event affecting the Debian project in recent months. The adoption of systemd has been extremely controversial, even going so far as to result in calls for Debian to be forked. There have been other problems as of late, too, ranging from a serious bug breaking Wine just days before the Jessie freeze deadline, to the possibility of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD being dropped from Debian 8. And it was only just over a week ago that Joey Hess — another longtime Debian contributor — left the project, citing the "very unhealthy directions" that Debian has been led in lately.

Is the internal tension and strife caused by systemd about to tear the Debian project apart? Recent events such as the aforementioned have suggested that this is becoming more and more of a possibility. The repercussions of this drama will no doubt be felt wide and far, given Debian's own popularity, as well it forming the basis of other major Linux distros such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

gewg_ writes:

Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports

Several locations on the Internet, including the official Avast forum, Reddit, and Firefox support site Mozilla Zine, are filling up with user reports that the latest version of Avast deletes Firefox addons automatically.

[...]Some users report that add-ons get deleted automatically on startup and without option to prevent this from happening in the first place.

It is unclear right now what is causing the issue and why only some users of the browser who have Avast installed on their systems are affected by the automatic removal of Firefox addons on the system.

gewg_ writes:

Bloomberg via Business Week reported:

The U.S. government expects to earn $5 billion to $6 billion from the renewable-energy loan program that funded flops including Solyndra LLC, supporting President Barack Obama's decision to back low-carbon technologies.

The Department of Energy has disbursed about half of $32.4 billion allocated to spur innovation, and the expected return will be detailed in a report due to be released as soon as tomorrow[*], according to an official who helped put together the data.

The results contradict the widely held view that the U.S. has wasted taxpayer money funding failures including Solyndra, which closed its doors in 2011 after receiving $528 million in government backing. That adds to Obama's credibility as he seeks to make climate change a bigger priority after announcing a historic emissions deal with China.

A $5 billion return to taxpayers exceeds the returns from many venture capital and private equity investments in clean energy, said Michael Morosi, an analyst at Jetstream Capital LLC, which invests in renewable energy.

[*] See also: Solyndra Program Vilified by Republicans Turns a Profit

jonathan writes:

A sad day. Glen A. Larson, who most will know here for creating Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Knight Rider has died at the age of 77.

Larson died Friday night of esophageal cancer at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica.

Robotron writes:

A week ago, news that the U.S. job market appeared to be rallying conferred confidence toward economic recovery. Yet hot on the heels of these buoyant announcements were studies analyzing the British and American labor markets. They conclude that anywhere from one third to one half of all jobs will be performed by machines within the next two decades. Low skilled work will be hardest hit with circa 70% of these positions deemed 'under threat'.

These results appear months after publications like Scientific American acknowledge the dearth of good data on automation. As you'd expect of such fledgling research, solutions to the impending employment blight are thin on the ground: Deloitte's researchers concluded workers need more digital know-how, managerial and creative skills in order to 'upskill and adapt'. What, no basic income?!

gewg_ writes:

FutureGov reports:

The Indonesian tax agency has recorded 90 per cent savings by using open source systems, it told FutureGov.

"We spent only 10 per cent [with open source] compared to [the cost of] using proprietary systems," Harry Gumelar, Director of Transformation and ICT, said.

These savings come from cheaper maintenance costs and free [licenses] with open source software.

The agency has used open source software since 2002 and is now moving some applications within its core tax administration system to open source, he said. However, its most critical systems still remain on proprietary software because of support concerns.

Apart from the savings, the agency was also pushed towards open source due to the complexity of the procurement process in Indonesia, Gumelar said. Since open source doesn't involve large amounts of spending, the agency is able to bypass the complexity of the system.

He has also found Linux to be more stable and faster while handling big systems like servers, as compared to Windows. The agency is now evaluating whether it should move its document management system to open source.

Serp Kannella Gigantica writes:

Overfishing has been a problem for ages, but oceans are big and it's not as if the authorities can track where every boat drops its nets -- At least, until now, thanks to Google, SkyTruth and Oceana.

Culling data from AIS - the automatic identification system that boats are required to broadcast so that they don't get lost - the trio can overlay that imagery with satellite maps to show if any boat is operating in a prohibited zone, and switching off a vessel's AIS is cause enough to be hauled in by the authorities.

Maybe this will be the inspiration for a whole new series called Law and Order: Environmental Crimes Unit, and known overfisher and Soylent News user TheMightyBuzzard will finally receive the keel-hauling he deserves.