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Despite recent advances in understanding orgasm variation, little is known about ways in which sexual orientation is associated with men’s and women’s orgasm occurrence. Now Discover Magazine reports that scientists at Indiana University have surveyed over 6,000 people on the internet to generate some hard data on how often people experienced orgasm with a familiar partner and it turns out that homosexual and heterosexual men have similar orgasm frequencies (~85%), while women on average have lower (~63%) rates of orgasm. However, if you separate heterosexual and homosexual women, there’s a big difference: heterosexual women reported having orgasms 61.6% of the time, while lesbians have orgasms 74.7% of the time.

The study, titled "Variation in Orgasm Occurrence by Sexual Orientation in a Sample of U.S. Singles" and published online this week in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, uses a large-scale nationally representative sample to examine how self-identified sexual orientation can affect how often lovers have orgasms (paywalled original paper). "These findings may contribute to promotion of more informed sexual health, by reminding us to pay attention to individual variation in research and clinical practice -- variation in sexual experiences, variation in sexual identities and variation in sexual outcomes," says lead author Justin R. Garcia,

The researchers speculate on the patterns observed, suggesting it could be the result of such known factors as length of a sexual encounter (earlier research points to lesbian women spending more time per sexual session); differences in gendered and sexual attitudes across sexual orientation; and even possible biological factors, such as prenatal exposure to the hormones testosterone and estrogen. "Some individuals will say what they want in a sexual encounter, or may be willing to say as much if their partner asked," says Garcia. "For others, communication may be nonverbal, with body language being key. This may also involve getting to know each other, both in and out of the bedroom, to understand what allows a particular sexual partner to experience a positive sexual outcome."

Typos suck. They are saboteurs, undermining your intent, causing your resume to land in the “pass” pile, or providing sustenance for an army of pedantic critics. If we are our own harshest critics, why do we miss those annoying little details? Now Nick Stockton writes that the reason typos get through isn’t because we’re stupid or careless, it’s because what we’re doing is actually very smart. “When you’re writing, you’re trying to convey meaning. It’s a very high level task,” says psychologist Tom Stafford, who studies typos of the University of Sheffield in the UK. As with all high level tasks, your brain generalizes simple, component parts (like turning letters into words and words into sentences) so it can focus on more complex tasks (like combining sentences into complex ideas). "The reason we don’t see our own typos is because what we see on the screen is competing with the version that exists in our heads," writes Stockton. "When you’re proof reading, you are trying to trick your brain into pretending that it’s reading the thing for the first time." Stafford suggests that if you want to catch your own errors, you should try to make your work as unfamiliar as possible. Change the font or background color, or print it out and edit by hand. “Once you’ve learned something in a particular way, it’s hard to see the details without changing the visual form,” say Stafford.

BBC reports that computer programmer Philip Danks for has been jailed for 33 months after recording Fast And Furious 6 from the back of a cinema after a judge in Wolverhampton ruled that the defendant uploaded the movie, which was downloaded 700,000 times. As well as putting the film on the internet, Danks offered to sell copies of the film using his Facebook profile. The judge who sentenced Danks said his behaviour was "bold, arrogant and cocksure". Police said that Danks had continued to illegally distribute movies after his arrest in May last year. Fraud investigators quickly traced him after they noticed his online ‘Thecod3r’ tag attached to the video was identical to his profile on dating site Plenty of Fish. Danks was arrested by police after a special ‘webwatch’ team was set up by LA-based Universal Pictures, who raided his home in Bloxwich, Walsall on May 23 – less than a week after the video surfaced online. The court heard that despite making some money from sales of the film on Facebook and by personal delivery his real motive was ‘street cred’. ‘The first person with a pirated version attracts much kudos," said Ari Alibhai, prosecuting on behalf of the Federation Against Copyright Theft. ‘He wanted recognition from the community."

Sophie Curtis reports at the Telegraph that an ad-free internet would cost each user about $230 a year – a sum that the vast majority of UK web users say they would never pay. Ebuzzing calculated the average ‘value’ of each web user by dividing the amount of money spent on digital advertising in the UK in 2013 (£6.4 billion) by the number of UK web users (45 million). However in a survey of more than 1,400 UK consumers, 98 per cent said they would not be willing to pay this amount to browse the internet without advertisements and although most consumers regard ads as a necessary trade-off to keep the internet free, they will go to great lengths to avoid advertising they do not wish to see. "It’s clear the ad industry has a major role to play in keeping web content free, but we have to respond to what consumers are telling us," says Jeremy Arditi. "We need to get better at engaging, not better at interrupting. That means introducing new formats which consumers find less invasive, more creative ads that are better placed, and giving consumers a degree of choice and control."

The study also looked specifically at the mobile app sector and found that 77 per cent of consumers never upgrade to paid for versions of free mobile apps. "Publishers of mobile apps will remain heavily reliant on in-app advertising to fund their content creation," says Arditi. "That means the same rules apply – they must give consumers ads that offer choice, relevance, entertainment and brevity."

Robert McMillan writes that when it comes to computers, the federal government has a nasty reputation for prizing ISO standards and regulatory checkboxes above working code but now Mikey Dickerson, the former Google engineer who flew into Washington a year ago to salvage the disastrous Healthcare.gov website, says that's changing and the feds want all the techies out there to know Dickerson wasn’t forced to do his amazing job in a suit and tie.

I you do take a job at the White House, you may want to bring your own snacks, expect to work at a desk, not a couch, and hold off on bringing your skateboard to work. Still, the feds are trying to do tech in a clueful fashion. The Obama administration has opened the door to open-source software and collaborative coding. And, hey, even the CIA is using Amazon’s web services.

In a White House video, Dickerson says he is asked one question again and again by people curious about his new job. They “want to know if I’m wearing a suit to work every day,” In the video, there’s a shot of a staff meeting where President Obama gives Dickerson and his fellow tech “hot-shots” a shout out. “They’re starting to look official now, aren’t they? They’ve got suits and everything,” Obama quips, a nod to the black jacket and yellow tie Dickerson has worn to the meeting. Dickerson tells the president this isn’t the norm. “This is literally only because you’re here,” he replies.

For decades, butter has been the most vilified nutrient in the American diet but Time Magazine's cover story says that new science reveals that fat isn’t what’s hurting our health (paywalled). According to Time, scientists were wrong to label saturated fats the enemy — that carbs, sugar and processed foods are mainly to blame for obesity, diabetes and other weight-related diseases, according to a growing body of research and that Americans should reconsider the role saturated fats play in our diets.

Some of the confusion comes from the decades-long war on trans fats, the artificially produced artery-clogging ingredient found in baked goods and desserts. Science has shown that trans fats are harmful because they increase risk of heart disease because they both raise level of bad cholesterol (LDL) and lower levels of good cholesterol (HDL). Last year, the Food and Drug Administration said it would require food makers to phase out trans fats. "I do agree butter, along with other saturated fats like poultry skin, coconut oil, full fat dairy and certain cuts of red meat, are no longer the enemy," says TODAY diet expert Joy Bauer. "Unfortunately when fat was vilified back in the 1970s, we replaced those fats with…you guessed it…refined carbohydrates. That’s why we’re in trouble now."

According to Dr. Fred Kummerow, the 99-year old pioneer of trans-fat research and one of the first scientists to assert a link between heart disease and processed foods, the saturated fat in butter, cheese and meats does not contribute to the clogging of arteries — and in fact is beneficial in moderate amounts in the context of a healthy diet. “What I really want is to see trans fats gone finally,” says Kummerow, “and for people to eat better and have a more accurate understanding of what really causes heart disease.”

ZDNet reports that by 2025, the Finnish capital intends to revamp its public transport system to such an extent that private car ownership becomes pointless. The plan goes like this:

The theory goes like this: imagine a family that has opted not to own a car. When they want to drop the kids off at school, they simply arrange an on-demand bus service instead. They use ridesharing and buses to get to work, and in the holidays they rent a car to travel to their summer house. When they need to get around Helsinki, they use city bikes, renting a locker to store any heavy bags. If the weather changes while they're out cycling, a journey planner will alert them and suggest another way of reaching their destination without getting soaked. Under the plan, all these services will be accessed through a single online platform. People will be able to buy their transport in service packages that work like mobile phone tariffs: either as a complete monthly deal or pay as you go options based on individual usage. Any number of companies can use the platform to offer transport packages, and if users find their travel needs change, they'll be able to switch packages or moved to a rival with a better deal.

"The city wants to build a framework for an open market where companies can operate and offer their services in different combinations. The City doesn't want to decree what services are offered, but help to facilitate the establishment of an ecosystem that enables private companies to produce a variety of them," says transport engineer Sonja Heikkilä. "There would be several commercial [transport] operators offering these services, in the same way as in telecommunications today. The customers could choose the operator and the service package they want."

ZDNet reports that from supercomputers to stock markets to smartphones, Linux dominates most computing markets, but Linus Torvalds still wants Linux to rule on one place it doesn't: The desktop. "The challenge on the desktop is not a kernel problem. It's a whole infrastructure problem. I think we'll get there one day," said Torvalds at the LinuxCon Convention in Chicago. "Year of the Linux desktop?" asked Kroah-Hartman. "I'm not going there," replied Torvalds with a smile.

Torvalds also discussed the issue of kernel code bloat as Linux is now being run in small-form-factor embedded devices. "We've been bloating the kernel over the last 20 years, but hardware has grown faster," Torvalds said. Torvalds wants to push the envelope for the embedded market despite some challenges. He noted that some of the small-form-factor device vendors have their own operating system technologies in place already, and those vendors don't always make hardware readily available to Linux kernel developers.

The issue of Linux code maintainers was another hot-button topic addressed by Torvalds, who noted that some Linux kernel code has only a single maintainer and that can mean trouble when that maintainer wants to take time off. Torvalds said that a good setup that is now used by the x86 maintainers is to have multiple people maintaining the code. It's an approach that ARM Linux developers have recently embraced, as well. "When I used to do ARM merges, I wanted to shoot myself and take a few ARM developers with me," Torvalds said. "It's now much less painful and ARM developers are picking up the multiple maintainer approach."

AP reports that wildlife investigators who watched as birds burn and fell at the Ivanpah Dry Lake Solar Tower Plant are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand "streamers" by the plant operator to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group. Those statistics haven’t curbed the enthusiasm of the Obama administration for the solar-power plant, which granted Ivanpah a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. The deaths are "alarming. It's hard to say whether that's the location or the technology," says Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society. "There needs to be some caution." Federal wildlife officials say the plant might act as a "mega-trap" for wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their death in the intensely focused light rays.

The $2.2 billion plant at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border is the world's biggest plant to employ so-called power towers. More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high. The water inside is heated to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes. While biologists say there is no known feasible way to curb the number of birds killed, the companies behind the projects say they are hoping to find one — studying whether lights, sounds or some other technology would scare them away, says Joseph Desmond, senior vice president at BrightSource Energy. Power-tower proponents are fighting to keep the deaths from forcing a pause in the building of new plants when they see the technology on the verge of becoming more affordable and accessible (PDF). When it comes to powering the country's grids, "diversity of technology ... is critical," says Thomas Conroy, a renewable-energy expert. "Nobody should be arguing let's be all coal, all solar," all wind, or all nuclear. "And every one of those technologies has a long list of pros and cons."

Asian Image reports that a campaign has been launched on Twitter urging people not to share a video purporting to show the murder of James Foley and thousands of ordinary users from around the world have backed the plan to deny IS publicity in horror at the horrific beheading footage, using the hashtag #ISISmediablackout. Twitter's chief executive Dick Costolo said the firm was taking action against accounts which spread the video. Still images from the video were removed from Twitter. Some individuals, including Al Jazeera America’s Wajahat Ali, said sharing the images of Foley’s apparent death on social media played into the militant group’s hands while others users suggested journalists “have a responsibility” to report murder.

The video of Foley’s purported killing was initially posted on YouTube, but taken down shortly afterward. Some criticized YouTube for not taking the video down quickly enough. "It's lucky that video didn't have a unlicensed Katy Perry song as a soundtrack or it would've been deleted from YouTube in seconds," wrote Tom Gara. A YouTube spokesperson would not say how long the video had remained posted on the site. The spokesperson said the company had "clear policies that prohibit content like gratuitous violence, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts, and we remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users".