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takyon writes:

IBM's job cuts are now expected to affect at least 14,000 employees:

International Business Machines Corp. this week quietly laid off employees, continuing a wave of job cuts the company announced in April. IBM declined to say how many jobs would be cut overall. The total layoffs could affect more than 14,000 jobs, according to an estimate by Stanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi.

[...] The company said on Friday it had more than 20,000 open positions. Two employees reached Friday said that IBM's internal job-search tool listed between 7,000 and 8,000 open positions.

Also at WRAL TechWire, The Register , and InformationWeek .

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takyon writes:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is monitoring 157 pregnant women in the United States who may be infected with the Zika virus. It is also monitoring 122 such pregnant women in Puerto Rico. The new federal guidelines and counts include women who may not show symptoms of the virus. For example, of the 157 women in the U.S. and D.C., 88% reported rash, 49% arthralgia, 51% fever, and just 23% reported conjunctivitis. Zika virus nucleic acid detection was only reported in 25%.

From the report:

Case reports indicate that fetuses and infants of pregnant women with asymptomatic Zika virus infection might be at risk for microcephaly and other severe brain defects. Following pregnant women with laboratory evidence of possible Zika virus infection in the surveillance system, regardless of symptoms, allows better characterization of the full impact and consequences of infection to the mother and her offspring, and might allow for better stratification of risk for adverse congenital outcomes.

[...] The findings in this report are subject to at least three limitations. First, data provided to the jurisdictions and CDC regarding symptoms and symptom onset might not be accurate or complete because of variability in recall by patients or data available to jurisdictions. Second, only pregnant women who are tested for Zika virus infection are included, thereby potentially underestimating the prevalence of infection and outcomes among all pregnant women. Finally, all states are not included in the [U.S. Zika Pregnancy Registry (USZPR)], possibly affecting the representativeness of these data with regard to all pregnant women identified with a possible Zika virus infection.

The Miami Herald notes that 36 of the 157 are in Florida, quadruple the number under the old guidelines.

Future reports will include details about the outcomes of these pregnancies. The CDC will also begin posting weekly updates on the number of Zika-related pregnancy cases it is monitoring.

Previous coverage:
Why Concerns for Global Spread of Zika Means Rio de Janeiro’s 2016 Olympics Must Not Proceed

Original Submission

bitstream writes:

Two reports from a global collaborative study involving hundreds of investigators from 18 countries published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2014 and The Lancet 2016 (today) are shaking up conventional wisdom around salt consumption. the conventional guideline recommends that the entire population lower its sodium intake below 2.3 grams per day, a level that fewer than 5% of Canadians and people around the world now consume. The PURE study found that the lowest risk of death and cardiovascular events happened to those who consumed moderate amounts of sodium at a level of 3 - 6 grams per day. (The Lancet is owned by Elsevier.)

According to Professor Francesco Cappuccio, head of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Nutrition, there are several reasons for dismissing it. It was done by testing urine samples given in the morning and then “extrapolated to 24-hour excretion” using an “inadequate” equation. Also, the participants were “almost exclusively from clinical trials of sick people that have a very high risk of dying and are taking several medications”. Further, he claims the researchers have committed a “statistical sin” and used “biologically meaningless” classification.

Perhaps time to question conventional wisdom and adjust the dose to 3-6 grams per day?

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Misaligned mirrors are being blamed for a fire that broke out at the world's largest solar power plant, leaving the high-tech facility crippled for the time being. It sounds like the plant's workers suffered through a real hellscape, too.

A small fire was reported yesterday morning at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California, forcing a temporary shutdown of the facility. It's now running at a third of its capacity (a second tower is down due to scheduled maintenance), and it's not immediately clear when the damaged tower will restart. It's also unclear how the incident will impact California's electricity supply.

-- submitted from IRC

The plant was previously implicated for Setting Birds On Fire In Mid-Flight.

Coverage: AP.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

The LA Times reports:

Climbing profits at tech companies in 2015 -- as revenue and earnings largely fell at other U.S. businesses -- gave the industry the five most-stuffed corporate wallets for the first time since tracking began in 2007.

Oracle Corp. knocked drug maker Pfizer Inc. from the top-five list, joining Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Google-owner Alphabet Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. as the most cash-rich U.S. companies, according to Moody's Investment Service.

The five tech companies accounted for $504 billion, or 30%, of the $1.68 trillion in cash and marketable securities held by more than 1,000 top firms (excluding banks), the credit rating issuer said in a report Friday.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Two Soylentils wrote with a caution about a new strategy in Microsoft's playbook to get people to upgrade to Windows 10.

If you Click on the Red "X", You're Getting the Windows 10 Upgrade

An Anonymous Coward writes:

That pesky Windows 10 forceware box...

This notification means your Windows 10 upgrade will occur at the time indicated, unless you select either Upgrade now or "Click here to change upgrade schedule or cancel scheduled upgrade". If you click on OK or on the red "X", you're all set for the upgrade and there is nothing further to do.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3095675

New Windows 10 Nag Screen May Trick 7, 8.x Users

SomeGuy elaborates:

Windows 7 or 8.x users that want or need to hold on to their current operating systems may be in for a very unpleasant surprise. Microsoft has essentially changed their Windows 10 update notification from a very pushy "opt-in" to an "opt-out". The new notification automatically schedules a time to receive Windows 10. Clicking the "X", as many have gotten used to, no longer prevents installation. Those that do not pay close attention to this new notification may inadvertently wind up with Windows 10 even if they did not want it. Very sneaky stuff.

Microsoft has published an offical article describing the changes.

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butthurt writes:

Manufacturers of packaged food sold in the United States face new requirements for the so-called "Nutrition Facts" notices. The largest food processors have until July 2018 to comply with the new rules published on 20 May by the Food and Drug Administration; smaller companies have an additional year to comply.

Among the changes are a new line of text disclosing "Added Sugars" as distinguished from the sugars naturally present in, for example, fruits and milk. According to Reuters,

The Sugar Association [...] said it was 'disappointed' at the requirement to list added sugars on the label and said the FDA had not demonstrated a scientific link between sugar and disease.

Serving sizes for certain foods will be changed, with some increasing and others decreasing. The sizes are ostensibly to be "based on actual consumption."

Caloric (energy) value is to be shown in a larger font than now required.

A White House press release says that labeling requirements for micronutrients will change:

An updated list of nutrients required to be declared based off of public health significance. Vitamin D and potassium—nutrients Americans often do not get enough of—will be required. Calcium and iron will continue to be required. Vitamins A and C are no longer required but can be included on a voluntary basis.

links:

• Reuters
• USA Today
• PBS
• WebMD
• White House press release

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"exec" writes:

http://qz.com/685956/im-suing-the-us-government-for-its-data-on-whos-entering-the-country/

Who enters the United States, from where, and why? Though the government knows the answers to these questions, which are central to currently raging policy debates, it only gives that information to people and companies that pay for the privilege.

So I'm suing to get free access to the data.

My lawsuit against the Department of Commerce asks a judge to compel the release of two databases that chronicle the flow of people into the US. One contains anonymous immigrations records; the other, statistics about international air travelers. Together, they would tell us a lot about who is entering the country, and for what purpose, at a time when American border policy is under intense scrutiny.

The databases, maintained by the department's International Trade Administration (ITA), are the only comprehensive records of people coming to the US. They don't just tally US visitors by their origin, but also by age, residency, port of entry, visa type, and initial destination.

I first sought access to this information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in March 2015. That request was denied. Instead, the government offered to sell me five years of statistics from the two databases for $173,775. Access costs upwards of $15,000 per year of data—the more recent, the more expensive.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

New Delhi Television reports

April and May tend to be the hottest months in northwest India and this year has been exceptionally so.
A small city in northwest India climbed to a searing 51 degrees Celsius--or 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit--on [May 19] and broke the country's record for all-time hottest temperature [..] set in 1886. [Likely typo by NDTV; see "1956", below]

The record was broken in Phalodi, which is just 125 miles away from the city that, up until [May 19], claimed fame as the hottest location in India: Pachpadra.

[...] April's heat wave was the most intense ever observed in Southeast Asia.

In India, it lasted for weeks--but the heat never truly dissipated, dragging on into May. Hundreds of people have died from heat-related illness. Northern India and Nepal have been battling their worst wildfires in years. Officials have on occasion banned daytime cooking in an attempt to prevent accidental fires that killed nearly 100 people in late April.

The Independent adds

Sweltering country seeks the relief of the monsoon, but this year's downpour could be up to 11 days late as officials blame climate change

[...] India's previous record high was 50.6C (123 F), which was set in 1956 in the city of Alwar, also in Rajasthan.

Hundreds of people have died as crops have withered in the fields in more than 13 states, forcing tens of thousands of small farmers to abandon their land and move into the cities.Others have killed themselves rather than go to live in urban shanty towns.

[...] The Indian Express newspaper reported that more than 400 farmers in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra alone had taken their own lives this year.

[...] Rivers, lakes, and dams have dried up in many parts of the western states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) warned that heatwave conditions were expected to continue (PDF)[1] for much of the next week in parts of central and north-west India, interspersed with dust and thunder storms in places.

Dr Laxman Singh Rathore, the IMD's director general, firmly pinned the blame for the rising temperatures on climate change, noting the trend dated back about 15 years.

[1] It's just a page full of links; I see no actual content in what appears to be the main frame--even after archive.is runs all the scripts.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Oculus has apparently backtracked on a promise to allow Oculus-specific titles to run using any VR headset:

VR headset company Oculus has backtracked on a promise not to lock down its software to its hardware. In an update put out this week, the company's digital rights management (DRM) system now checks whether the Oculus Rift headset is attached to the computer when playing a game. If it isn't, the game won't play, effectively ensuring that Oculus games will only work with Oculus headsets.

Although it is fairly common practice in the gaming industry to lock games down to specific hardware, the change goes directly against a promise made by Oculus' CEO Palmer Luckey. Responding to a comment on Reddit five months ago, Luckey wrote: "If customers buy a game from us, I don't care if they mod it to run on whatever they want. As I have said a million times (and counter to the current circlejerk), our goal is not to profit by locking people to only our hardware – if it was, why in the world would we be supporting GearVR and talking with other headset makers?"

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Wendy's is getting ready to change the fast-food industry. The fast-food giant plans to install self-service kiosks at its restaurants because of growing labor costs linked to minimum-wage increases. California and New York are both raising minimum wages to $15 per hour over the next several years and fast-food workers in other states are pushing for similar wages.

The fast-food giant says plans to start installing the kiosks by the end of the year. They will be in company owned outlets but individual franchisees will decide on their own whether to invest in the kiosks. There are more than 6,000 Wendy's but the majority of them are owned by franchisees.

So...they want to revert to being an automat?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The latest episode of Family Guy featured footage from the NES game Double Dribble, showing a glitch that allows a player to easily make three-point shots. The video was apparently copied directly from YouTube. TorrentFreak reports that the over seven-year-old original video has either been blocked by Fox using the DMCA or automatically blocked by the ContentID system:

Interestingly the clip that was uploaded by sw1tched was the exact same clip that appeared in the Family Guy episode on Sunday. So, unless Fox managed to duplicate the gameplay precisely, Fox must've taken the clip from YouTube. Whether Fox can do that and legally show the clip in an episode is a matter for the experts to argue but what followed next was patently absurd. Shortly after the Family Guy episode aired, Fox filed a complaint with YouTube and took down the Double Dribble video game clip on copyright grounds. (mirror Daily Motion)

Faced with yet another example of a blatantly wrongful takedown, TorrentFreak spoke with Fight for the Future CTO Jeff Lyon. Coincidentally he'd just watched the episode in question. "It's most likely that this is just another example of YouTube's Content ID system automatically taking down a video without regard to actual copyright ownership and fair use. As soon as FOX broadcast that Family Guy episode, their robots started taking down any footage that appeared to be reposted from the show — and in this case they took down the footage they stole from an independent creator," Lyon says.

YouTube's troubles with overzealously removing fair use content are well documented. It seems now that even original content isn't safe once the media industry gets a hold of it.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Common Dreams reports

The government's own assessment of the toxic Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) shows that the controversial trade deal will produce negligible economic benefits while damaging most Americans' jobs and wages.

The U.S. International Trade Commission's (ITC) report (PDF), issued [May 18], shows that the TPP "would likely have only a small positive effect on U.S. growth," Reuters reported.

"This may be the most damning government report ever submitted for a trade agreement." --Leo W. Gerard, United Steelworkers

Public Citizen reports via Common Dreams: TPP Study Projects Worsening Trade Balances for 16 of 25 U.S. Economic Sectors; Overall U.S. Trade Deficit Increase

[Continues...]

Phoenix666 writes:

SoylentNews has covered fog harvesting before. This article had a video with an interesting 'before' and 'after' segment that really shows the difference it can make.

Using 'Atrapanieblas'—large nets erected on the hillside—farmers like Maria Teresa Avalos Cucho take advantage of the daily fog to capture condensation, harvesting between 200 and 400 liters a day from each panel—which is then stored in tanks, and gravity-fed to the crops below.

It's efficient. It's resilient. And it's a hell of a lot more economical than paying truck drivers to bring water each day. According to the fabulous Permaculture Magazine, where I found this particular gem of a video, harvesting fog also has particular potential in coastal areas where the alternative is energy-hungry desalination. As we've noted before, fog harvesting also has been utilized in urban areas to bring fresh water to the slums.

Could California use the same technique to alleviate drought, at least in coastal areas that are famously foggy like the Bay Area?

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Pain and reward are powerful motivators. Most often seen to have a yin-yang relationship, they are often employed as the carrot-and-stick to influence the behavior in a person. Because they are seen to have a complementary relationship, much of the research on brain imaging tended to investigate the pain and reward processing regions separately.

There are two dominant theories regarding the pain/pleasure interaction. The competition hypothesis proposes that when presented with a reward, this not only activates the reward-processing neurons in the brain, but also suppress the pain-processing neurons and vice versa. The second theory, the salience hypothesis, proposes that these neurons are not linked and that neuron activity depends upon the degree of motivation resulting from the pain or pleasure. Most research has investigated and supported the competition hypothesis.

A new paper by Cui et al., argues that there actually is good support for the salience hypothesis. They point out that most of the previous studies were cue-based, where a subject was presented with a cue that either pain or reward would be presented, thus allowing them time to weigh the trade-offs, and they argue this would pit the two neural regions against each other and thus preordain support the competition hypothesis. Cui et al. devised an experiment where combinations are presented, such as a reward being given when shown a picture of someone being inflicted by pain. Their results show good support for the salience hypothesis, but they point out that there could be different time scales involved between the two processing regions in the brain.

It is worth noting that the salience hypothesis and competition hypothesis are not antagonistic to each other. One possibility is that they are both true, but manifest in different temporal stages of processing. To our knowledge, the literature lacks high-temporal-resolution data that could directly address this possibility.

So if your boss gives you a raise, that is a good motivator for you, and if they fire your co-worker, that also could be a good motivator. However, if Cui et al. are correct, perhaps the best motivator for you is to give you a raise AND fire your co-worker.

Original Submission