SoylentNews

NotSanguine writes:

Patricia Cohen at The New York Times is reporting on the issue of age bias in hiring in the United States.

In today's (7 June 2019) article, Ms. Cohen writes:

MADISON, Ala. — Across the United States, mammoth corporations and family businesses share a complaint: a shortage of workers. As the unemployment rate has tunneled its way to a half-century low, employers insist they must scramble to lure applicants.

The shadow of age bias in hiring, though, is long. Tens of thousands of workers say that even with the right qualifications for a job, they are repeatedly turned away because they are over 50, or even 40, and considered too old.

The problem is getting more scrutiny after revelations that hundreds of employers shut out middle-aged and older Americans in their recruiting on Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms. Those disclosures are supercharging a wave of litigation.

But as cases make their way to court, the legal road for proving age discrimination, always difficult, has only roughened. Recent decisions by federal appeals courts in Chicago and Atlanta have limited the reach of anti-discrimination protections and made it even harder for job applicants to win.

It certainly seems like many of us here (myself included) are on the older side, what sort of experiences do Soylentils have with the current job market? Have you experienced age bias? If so, what (if anything) did you do about it? Are you more or less able to find work that meets your skill level and/or financial needs?

Is it appropriate to prefer younger workers? If so, why?

Here's a 2018 report from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about age bias and the Age Discrimination In Employment Act, signed into law in 1967.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

In its fifth year of life, some promising development of a Playstation 4 emulator has emerged thanks to its mostly standard PC architecture and abundant FOSS projects to draw from. From wololo.net:

Orbital is the combination of three separate projects which together allow us to boot into PS4 kernels. Those being:
orbital-bios, orbital-grub and the most important part: orbital-qemu. A summary of these would be that orbital-bios is a SeaBIOS fork to add support to the PS4 quirks (no VGA, no ISA bus, etc.). This is needed because the PS4 is not really a PC. orbital-grub simply forks GRUB and adds a modified freebsd bootloader to add support for Orbis kernels, since they include custom sections written by Sony and orbital-qemu is a QEMU fork that adds support for PS4 hardware: Aeolia (USB, Ethernet, etc. etc.) and Liverpool (GPU and Audio).

It seems they were able to translate the graphics stack to run on top of Vulcan fairly well, but this system currently requires a physical DualShock 4 connected to the host with USB passthrough. Further, it can only work with decrypted firmwares made available via previously known exploits on physical consoles.

The repository is hosted, somewhat amusingly, at GitHub: https://github.com/AlexAltea/orbital

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

How about a bit of good news? It looks like the controversial provision in the Taxpayer First Act that would have prevented the Internal Revenue Service from directly competing with filing services offered through the Free File Program will no longer be part of the bill.

The provision in question aimed to make permanent the government's deal with tax filing services like H&R Block and TurboTax through the Free File Program, which should, though it evidently doesn't, make filing through major tax services free and accessible to American taxpayers who make less than $66,000. But Politico reported Wednesday that a revised version of the Taxpayer First Act sans the provision would be introduced this week and passed as soon as next week. ProPublica reported Thursday that it confirmed the news with an unidentified House Republican staffer.

Source: https://gizmodo.com/congress-is-killing-that-sketchy-provision-that-banned-1835317146

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

As Previously Covered the NASA's Mars 2020 Rover mission will include a helicopter drone designed to work in the thin Martian atmosphere. Testing of the copter has now entered its final phase.

While the Mars Copter is just a technology demonstrator and will carry no science instruments, it will have an onboard high resolution camera and will be controlled from Earth with communications relayed through the Rover at a rate of 250kb/s at distances up to 1000 meters.

"We expect to complete our final tests and refinements and deliver the helicopter to the High Bay 1 clean room for integration with the rover sometime this summer," said Aung, "but we will never really be done with testing the helicopter until we fly at Mars."

The Mars Helicopter will launch with the Mars 2020 rover on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in July 2020 from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. When it lands in Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, the rover will also be the first spacecraft in the history of planetary exploration with the ability to accurately retarget its point of touchdown during the landing sequence.

The 4 lb (1.8 kg) Linux based drone has a body about the size of a softball. It will be run on lithium-ion batteries charged via solar panels and is constructed of lightweight materials - carbon fiber, aircraft aluminum, silicon, copper, foil, and aerogel.

The helicopter's twin blades will whirl at about 10 times the rate of a helicopter's blades on Earth — at 3,000 rpm — to stay aloft in Mars' thin atmosphere.

The demonstrator is expected to make as many as five flights before being retired.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Grab Some Binoculars and go Look at Jupiter Tonight:

Jupiter will reach opposition on Monday, June 10 in an annual event that marks the time when Earth is directly between the gas giant and the sun. This means Jupiter is fairly close to Earth and you can spot it lurking in the sky all night long. This entire month offers up great viewing opportunities.

"The solar system's largest planet is a brilliant jewel to the naked eye, but looks fantastic through binoculars or a small telescope, which will allow you to spot the four largest moons, and maybe even glimpse a hint of the banded clouds that encircle the planet," NASA suggests in a skywatching update for June.

According to Wikipedia:

When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can reach an apparent magnitude of −2.94, bright enough for its reflected light to cast shadows, and making it on average the third-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus.

[...]Jupiter has 79 known moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury.

[...]Jupiter's diameter is one order of magnitude smaller (×0.10045) than that of the Sun, and one order of magnitude larger (×10.9733) than that of Earth. The Great Red Spot is roughly the same size as Earth.

takyon writes:

Microsoft has pulled a facial recognition database offline in response to criticism, but the contents are still available from alternate sources:

If you've ever uploaded photos of yourself to the internet under a creative commons license—which allows for re-use under certain conditions—they may already have been used to train AI programs to recognize human faces.

Microsoft released MS-Celeb-1M, a dataset of roughly 10 million photos from 100,000 individuals collected from the internet in 2016. The database was designed to contain photos of celebrities, but as Berlin-based researcher Adam Harvey pointed out with his project Megapixels, the definition of "celebrity" was quite broad. The database also contained photos of "journalists, artists, musicians, activists, policy makers, writers, and academics," Harvey wrote.

MS-Celeb-1M's webpage is currently offline, but before the database was quietly pulled, it was used far and wide to train facial recognition programs. Entities that made use of images in the database, according to Harvey, include Chinese tech firms such as SenseTime and Megvii, which have been linked to the Chinese state's use of facial recognition to track and oppress ethnic minorities.

[...] Even though Microsoft took it down, cleaned-up versions of the database are available to download from GitHub for example. Tools for working with the database, such as labelling lists that can reveal the names of photo subjects, also remain easily accessible.

"Despite the recent termination of the msceleb.org website, the dataset still exists in several repositories on GitHub, the hard drives of countless researchers, and will likely continue to be used in research projects around the world," Harvey wrote on Megapixels. A facial recognition challenge this year at Imperial College London plans to use a variant of the MS-Celeb-1M database, and offers download links.

Also at Boing Boing and Fast Company.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

AMD Secure Technology PSP Firmware Now Explorable, Thanks to Researcher's Tool

A security researcher this week released the PSPtool, a software tool that "aims to lower the entry barrier for looking into the code running" on the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP), officially known as AMD Secure Technology, and other AMD subsystems. The PSP serves similar functions to those of Intel's Management Engine (ME) processor. However, just like the Intel ME, the secretive and undocumented nature of the chip worries security and privacy advocates.

The researcher going by the online name of cwerling described the PSPTool as a "Swiss Army knife" for dealing with the AMD PSP's firmware. The tool is based on reverse-engineering efforts of AMD's proprietary file system that the company uses to pack firmware blobs into UEFI firmware images.

Usually, all firmware blobs can be parsed by another software program called the UEFITool. However, in this case AMD's firmware files are located in padding volumes that can't be parsed by the UEFITool. This is the reason for the PSPTool, which can locate the PSP firmware within UEFI images and parse it. Through this tool, more researchers can look into what their local PSP chip is doing to their computers, as its actions are normally hidden from the operating system or the main processor.

Previously: AMD to Consider Coreboot/Libreboot Support
AMD Confirms its Platform Security Processor Code will Remain Closed-Source

Related: Intel Management Engine Partially Defeated
EFF: Intel's Management Engine is a Security Hazard\
Disabling Intel ME 11 Via Undocumented Mode
Intel Management Engine Critical Firmware Update
HP Chip Protects Intel's Management Engine

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Cosmic bridge of radio waves provides first evidence of magnetic fields between galaxy clusters

Astrophysicists have discovered a giant ridge of plasma emitting radio waves that connects two galaxy clusters 10 million light years apart.

This cosmic bridge provides the first direct evidence of magnetic fields between galaxy clusters, astrophysicists report today in the journal Science.

"Typically, we observe emissions related to this mechanism within individual galaxies, and even in galaxy clusters, but radio emissions connecting clusters has never been observed before," said the study's lead author Federica Govoni from the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF).

Also at Science News, Astronomy Magazine, and Space.com.

A radio ridge connecting two galaxy clusters in a filament of the cosmic web (DOI: 10.1126/science.aat7500) (DX)

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Finally, the FCC has stopped teasing America and passed a plan to limit robocalling to our mobile phones.

The decision will allow mobile networks to block calls based on "reasonable call analytics" – in other words, identifying unusual call patterns – as well as provide a contacts-only whitelist. A related notice will see mobile carrier[s] add a caller ID authentication system called SHAKEN/STIR before the end of the year. And the FCC will look[sic] a new "safe harbor" provision that means mobile companies can block spoofed calls.

While none of the aspects of the measure are new or innovative, making them legal is a big step. Unfortunately, the measure comes with a catch.

The FCC has purposefully left the way open for cellular operators to charge for its "service."

According to FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement (pdf):

As far as this new blocking technology goes, so far, so good. But there is one devastating problem with our approach. There is nothing in our decision today that prevents carriers from charging consumers for this blocking technology to stop robocalls

[...]I think robocall solutions should be free to consumers. Full stop. I do not think that this agency should pat itself on the back for its efforts to reduce robocalls and then tell consumers to pay up. They are already paying the price—in scams flooding our phone lines; wasted time responding to false and fraudulent calls offering us what we did not ask for, do not want, and do not need; and a growing distrust in our most basic communications."

Expect to see carriers add additional fees to the list of unavoidable charges currently on your bills which include:

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Tech Review reports on a study of the energy (carbon) costs of training an AI to do natural language processing and compares to the lifecycle costs of cars,
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613630/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in-their-lifetimes/

In a new paper, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, performed a life cycle assessment for training several common large AI models. They found that the process can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent—nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average American car (and that includes manufacture of the car itself).

It’s a jarring quantification of something AI researchers have suspected for a long time. “While probably many of us have thought of this in an abstract, vague level, the figures really show the magnitude of the problem,” says Carlos Gómez-Rodríguez, a computer scientist at the University of A Coruña in Spain, who was not involved in the research. “Neither I nor other researchers I’ve discussed them with thought the environmental impact was that substantial.”

In the grand scheme of things, five cars out of the millions made every year isn't a very big deal...but your faithful AC would never have guessed that it took anywhere near that much energy.

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

More than two years after voter check-in software failed on Election Day in a North Carolina county, federal authorities will finally conduct a forensic analysis of electronic poll books to see if Russian military hackers who targeted the software provider may have tampered with registration information to disrupt voting.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security analysis of laptops used in Durham County is the first known federal probe of voting technology that malfunctioned during the 2016 election, when Russian hackers infiltrated election systems in several states, part of what special counsel Robert Mueller said was an effort to favor Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The malfunction of VR Systems’ electronic poll book software forced officials in the heavily Democratic county to issue paper ballots and extend voting hours. How many voters may have been disenfranchised as a result is unknown.

State election officials seized for evidence 21 laptops used to check in Durham County voters for the 2016 balloting shortly after the leak of a National Security Agency report revealed in mid-2017 that VR Systems had been targeted by a Russian spear-phishing campaign, said Josh Lawson, who was general counsel of the North Carolina board of elections at the time.

Lawson said Thursday that his office asked federal officials to do a forensic exam of the laptops — and that the FBI assisted the state in making images of their hard drives.

That long-dormant request was renewed last Friday. The reason: The report Mueller issued in April on Russian interference in the 2016 election described how Kremlin-backed cyber spies had installed malware on the network of a company that “developed software used by numerous U.S. counties to manage voter rolls.”

Feds to finally examine 2016 NC poll books for hacking

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Bad news from science land: Fast-charging li-ion batteries may be quick to top up, but they're also quick to die

Boffins at Purdue University in America say they made the discovery while conducting atomic-level scanning of fast-charging lithium-ion battery electrodes. The team, led by Kejie Zhao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, used multiple scanning techniques and computer-aided enhancements to take a deep dive into a particular power pack, and found what may be the Achilles' heel of fast charging.

Essentially, what happens is that fast charging seemingly damages the battery's electrode particles, forcing the device to lose capacity and shorten its lifespan. This degradation is caused by lithium ions whizzing between internal electrodes, we're told.

"These fast charging batteries are often decked out with thicker electrodes, but that doesn't prevent damage," explained Zhao this week. "The capacity of batteries doesn't depend on how many particles are in the battery; what matters is how the lithium ions are used."

[...] According to Purdue Uni's Kayla Wiles:

Every time that a battery charges, lithium ions travel back and forth between a positive electrode and a negative electrode. These ions interact with particles in electrodes, causing them to crack and degrade over time. Electrode damage reduces a battery's charging capacity.

Trying to figure out ways to solve battery degradation is a major research problem that involves all areas of science. Before eggheads can begin to think of improving lithium-ion batteries, however, they need to understand the exact mechanism that leads to degradation.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Firefox will now limit many web trackers by default to protect users from ads and analytic companies, and websites that want to track digital fingerprints across the internet. The changes come to accommodate the increasing demand for more private searches. It will also speed up the browsing speed, and force advertisers to find less invasive techniques.

The Firefox change might not be as dramatic as what Apple did on its Safari browser a couple of years ago, when it added a feature that blocks nearly all third-party trackers by default, but it's definitely welcome.

Safari limits trackers by default, rather than blocking just the ones collected on a blacklist. It also totally blocks trackers from being used by third-parties if you do not interact with their source website for more than a day.

[...] Firefox may not be the most conservative browser when it comes to tracker blocking, but it is a huge leap ahead of Google Chrome, which is starting to experiments with tracking limiting features just now.

Differently from Mozilla and Apple, Google Chrome relies on targeted ads to survive and it is likely to lag behind its peers in terms of privacy.

Source: https://reclaimthenet.org/firefox-will-now-block-trackers-by-default/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

FBI releases files on Bigfoot from records vault

The FBI released 22 documents from its records vault on Wednesday concerning the agency's investigation into a possible Bigfoot.

The records, dated from 1976 and 1977, chronicle an analysis of an unidentified hair and tissue sample that some believed belonged to Bigfoot. The samples were said to have come from "a member of the deer family," the documents show.

Also at Popular Mechanics, NBC, and Vice.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

African Swine Fever is Spreading Fast and Eliminating it Will Take Decades:

The deadly pig virus that jumped from Africa to Europe is now ravaging China's $128 billion pork industry and spreading to other Asian countries, an unprecedented disaster that has prompted Beijing to slaughter millions of pigs. But stopping African swine fever isn't so easy.

The virus that causes the hemorrhagic disease is highly virulent and tenacious, and spreads in multiple ways. There's no safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection, nor anything to treat it. The widespread presence in China means it's now being amplified across a country with 440 million pigs—half the planet's total—with vast trading networks, permeable land borders and farms with little or no ability to stop animal diseases.

The number of pigs China will fatten this year is predicted to fall by 134 million, or 20%, from 2018—the worst annual slump since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began counting China's pigs in the mid-1970s. While the pig virus doesn't harm humans even if they eat tainted pork, the fatality rate in pigs means it could destroy the region's pork industry.

Spain's experience with the disease suggests that a cull alone won't be enough to solve the problem. The country implemented strict sanitary measures and industrialized its hog production system but it took 35 years and help from the European Union before the disease was eradicated in 1995. The Italian island of Sardinia has been trying unsuccessfully to get rid of the virus for four decades, and its hog population is a fraction of China's.

Infected animals are contagious before showing symptoms. It can be transmitted through excrement that then gets washed into waterways by storm runoff. It's extremely contagious --even minute quantities of the virus can contaminate drinking water from a river or stream. Direct contact with an infected pig, contaminated clothing, equipment, or facilities is sufficient. There's no effective vaccine or treatment.

Original Submission