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HughPickens.com writes: Getting caught in a tech support loop -- waiting on hold, interacting with automated systems, talking to people reading from unhelpful scripts and then finding yourself on hold yet again -- is a peculiar kind of aggravation that mental health experts say can provoke rage in even the most mild-mannered person. Now Kate Murphy writes at the NYT that just as you suspected, companies are aware of the torture they are putting you through as 92 percent of customer service managers say their agents could be more effective and 74 percent say their company procedures prevented agents from providing satisfactory experiences. "Don't think companies haven't studied how far they can take things in providing the minimal level of service," says Justin Robbins, who was once a tech support agent himself and now oversees research and editorial at ICMI. "Some organizations have even monetized it by intentionally engineering it so you have to wait an hour at least to speak to someone in support, and while you are on hold, you're hearing messages like, 'If you'd like premium support, call this number and for a fee, we will get to you immediately.'" Mental health experts say there are ways to get better tech support or maybe just make it more bearable. First, do whatever it takes to control your temper. Take a deep breath. Count to 10. Losing your stack at a consumer support agent is not going to get your problem resolved any faster and being negative in your dealings with others can quickly paint you as a complainer no one wants to work with. Don't bother demanding to speak to a supervisor, either. You're just going to get transferred to another agent who has been alerted ahead of time that you have come unhinged. To get better service by phone, dial the prompt designated for "sales" or "to place an order," which almost always gets you an onshore agent, while tech support is usually offshore with the associated language difficulties. Finally customer support experts recommended using social media, like tweeting or sending a Facebook message, to contact a company instead of calling. You are likely to get a quicker response, not only because fewer people try that channel but also because your use of social media shows that you know how to vent your frustration to a wider audience if your needs are not met.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GulfNews: A new analysis from Bankrate.com found that a median-income household in the U.S. could not afford the average price of a new vehicle in any of the 50 largest cities in the country, though cars are more affordable in some cities than others. The average price of a new car or light truck in 2016 is about $34,000, according to Kelley Blue Book. That's in part because new cars are loaded with helpful but expensive safety features like collision-avoidance systems. Bankrate calculated an "affordable" purchase price for major cities, using median incomes from U.S. census data, and factoring in costs for sales taxes and insurance. In San Jose, California -- the heart of Silicon Valley -- the median income is about $84,000, and an "affordable" new car purchase price is about $33,000 -- close to, but still below, the average new car price. In lower-income cities, however, affordable purchase prices for a typical family are far below the average cost of a new car. In Hartford, Connecticut, where the median income is about $29,000, an affordable purchase price is about $8,000 -- about a quarter of the average new-car price. Experian Automotive said the number of new cars bought with financing rose to more than 86 percent (Source: may be paywalled) in the first quarter of this year. The average loan amount topped $30,000, with the average term for a new-car loan in the 68-month range -- some stretch as long as seven years.

Slashdot reader Rick Zeman quotes the New York Times: In its early conception, Bitcoin was to exist beyond the control of any single government or country. It would be based everywhere and nowhere... Yet despite the talk of a borderless currency, a handful of Chinese companies have effectively assumed majority control of the Bitcoin network. They have done so through canny investments and vast farms of computer servers dispersed around the country...there are fears that China's government could decide, at some point, to pressure miners in the country to use their influence to alter the rules of the Bitcoin network. The government's intervention in 2013 suggests that Bitcoin is not too small to escape notice.

An anonymous reader writes: The driver killed in a Tesla car accident "celebrated the Autopilot feature that made it possible for him to cruise the highways, making YouTube videos of himself driving hands-free," reports the New York Times, adding that one of his videos of a near-miss went viral just 11 weeks before his death -- after it was shared on Twitter by Elon Musk. But USA Today reports that Tesla drivers have also filmed themselves playing Jenga and Checkers or sleeping while using the autopilot feature. "Even though Tesla tells drivers to 'keep your hands on the wheel at all times and stay alert,' the temptation to test a no-hands drive is just too much."

In April, a Volvo driver had criticized Tesla for releasing a dangerous "wannabe" Autopilot system. But when Tesla introduced the self-driving feature in October, Elon Musk argued that "Long term, it'll be way better than a person. It never gets tired, never has something to drink, never argues with someone in the car." He had also said that within three years Tesla cars should be able to drive a sleeping driver in to work -- but that that functionality is not currently supported.

The New York Times reports: More than 100 Nobel laureates have a message for Greenpeace: Quit the G.M.O.-bashing. Genetically modified organisms and foods are a safe way to meet the demands of a ballooning global population, the 109 laureates wrote in a letter posted online and officially unveiled at a news conference on Thursday in Washington, D.C...

"Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production," the group of laureates wrote. "There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity."
Slashdot reader ArmoredDragon writes: As an echo to that comment, one of the key benefits of GMO is increased crop yield, which means a reduced need for deforestation to make way for farmland. GMO food such as Golden Rice, which improves the micronutrient content of rice, and Low Acrylamide Spuds, which are potatoes engineered to have reduced carcinogen content compared to their natural counterparts, can possibly solve many health problems that are inherent with consuming non-GMO produce. And for those concerned about patent-related issues, many of these patents have recently expired, which means anybody can freely grow them and sell the seeds without the need to pay any royalties.

HughPickens.com writes: With nearly 40 percent of all pregnancies in the United States unintended, birth control is a critical public health issue. For short-term methods, visiting the doctor for a prescription can be time-consuming and sometimes costly and for some, like teenagers, it can be intimidating or embarrassing. Now Pam Belluck reports at the NYT that a growing assortment of new apps and websites now make it possible to get prescription contraceptives without going to the doctor as public health experts hope the new apps will encourage more women to start, or restart, using contraception and help reduce the country's stubbornly high rate of unintended pregnancies, as well as the rate of abortions. At least six digital ventures, by private companies and nonprofits, including Planned Parenthood, now provide prescriptions written by clinicians after women answer questions about their health online or by video. All prescribe birth control pills, and some prescribe patches, rings and morning-after pills and some ship contraceptives directly to women's doors. "At first I didn't believe it," said Susan Hashem, who wanted to restart birth control pills without missing work for a doctor's appointment. Hashem used an app called Lemonaid and paid $15 for a doctor to review her medical information and send a pill prescription to a local pharmacy. "I thought it was just a setup to get money," Hashem said. But after she answered the health questions one evening, "a doctor actually contacted me after office hours," and the next morning, she picked up three months' worth of pills.

Mark Zuckerberg has decided to keep billionaire VC Peter Thiel on Facebook's board of directors. The decision comes after weeks of controversy over whether it was appropriate for billionaire Thiel, who recently admitted to secretly funding a campaign of third-party lawsuits to bankrupt Gawker Media (more relevant but paywalled link, to remain on the board of a company that now plays such a powerful role in publishing. From a Gizmodo report: At Facebook's annual shareholders meeting today, every board member was up for re-election. The decision was made by shareholder vote, but ultimately fell to Zuckerberg, who controls more than 60 percent of the total voting power on the Facebook board.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New York Times: A new experimental airplane being built by NASA could help push electric-powered aviation from a technical curiosity and pipe dream into something that might become commercially viable for small aircraft. At a conference on Friday of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Washington, Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, announced plans for an all-electric airplane (Warning: source may be paywalled) designated as X-57 and nicknamed "Maxwell," part of the agency's efforts to make aviation more efficient and less of a polluter. "The X-57 will take the first giant step in opening a new era of aviation," Mr. Bolden declared. Maxwell is equipped with 14 electric propeller-turning motors located along the wings, which will all be used to create sufficient thrust during take-off and landing. Only two large motors on the tips of the wings will be used once it's up in the air. The plane is a result of NASA's "New Aviation Horizons" initiative: a 10-year program to create a new generation of X-planes that will make use of greener energy, use half as much fuel, and be half as loud as commercial aircraft in use today.

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: Microsoft has announced today that it will partner with Los Angeles-based startup Kind on a system for tracking the legal growing and sale of marijuana. Microsoft will work with the startup on software services for governments tracking legal weed, with Microsoft powering the software through its Azure cloud computing service. "The goal of this relationship is to leverage each company's resources to provide State, County, and Municipalities with purpose built solutions for track and trace ('seed to sale' in the cannabis industry) technology," Kind said in a statement. As reported in The New York Times, this is a pretty significant venture for a corporation publicly journeying into the controversial industry. Growing and selling marijuana is still illegal under the federal government.

An anonymous reader writes: Inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee said in an interview with The New York Times that the internet has become the "world's largest surveillance network. [...] It controls what people see. It creates mechanisms for how people interact. It's been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people's content, taking you to the wrong websites completely undermines the spirit of helping people create," he said. Berners-Lee thinks large corporations and governments are to blame. "The problem is the dominance of one search engine, one big social network, one Twitter for microblogging." At the Decentralized Web Summit, Berners-Lee met with a group of internet activists to discuss ways of "re-decentralizing" the internet, and giving individuals more control while ensuring more privacy and security. "The temptation to grab control of the internet by the government or by a company is always going to be there," he said. "They will wait until we're sleeping, because if you're a government or a company and you can control something, you'll want it. You want to control your citizens or exploit customers. The temptation is huge. Yes, we can have things enshrined in law, but even then it won't necessarily stop people."

The web has created millions of jobs, impacted nearly every industry, connected people, and arguably made the world a better place. But the person who started it all isn't exactly pleased with the way things have turned out to be. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, believes that the way it works in the present day "completely undermines the spirit of helping people create." The Next Web reports: "Edward Snowden showed we've inadvertently built the world's largest surveillance network with the web," said Brewster Kahle, who heads up Internet Archive. And he's not wrong: governments across the globe keep an eye on what their citizens are accessing online and some censor content on the Web in an effort to control what they think. To that end, Berners-Lee, Kahle and other pioneers of the modern Web are brainstorming ideas for a new kind of information network that can't be controlled by governments or powered by megacorporations like Amazon and Google.The New York Times originally reported on this and has more details. (But it is also paywalled.)

An anonymous reader writes: A team of researchers want to replace transistors with vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes are nothing new, however the ones in development at Caltech's Nanofabrication Group are a million times smaller than the ones in use 100 years ago. "Computer technologies seem to work in cycles," Alan Huang, a former electrical engineer for Bell Laboratories, told the New York Times. "Some of the same algorithms that were developed for the last generation can sometimes be used for the next generation." Dr. Axel Scherer, head of the Nanofabrication Group, said to the New York Times on Sunday, "Ten years ago, silicon transistors could meet all our demands. In the next decade, that will no longer be true." He argues silicon transistors can only take us so far. Vacuum tubes, for comparison, use tiny metal tubes that can control the flow of electricity. They're especially intriguing to researchers as they can provide a better solution to silicon transistors as they can consume less power and take-up a much smaller footprint. The report mentions they have the potential to bring an end to Moore's Law, even if silicon transistors show no signs of disappearing. For example, Lockheed Martin published new cooling methods in March that could help cool chips with tiny drops of water. With that said, Boeing has invested in researching vacuum tube chips. They may appear in the aviation industry before 2020, but it's unlikely we'll see Caltech's research appear in smartphones anytime soon.

New submitter Ungrounded Lightning writes: According to The New York Times, the U.S. death rate has risen for the first time in more than a decade (or several decades if particular). The rise is across the whole population, though whites, especially the less educated among them, were recently (and separately) documented to be particularly hard hit. The article speculates about drug abuse (prescription as well as illegal), suicides, and Alzheimer's, though it notes that heart disease -- which had been consistently dropping -- has also risen. No mention was made of whether the cutover to Obamacare might have had some effect. The aging of the population was mentioned, though the rise is present even within particular age groups. The National Center for Health Statistics shows the adjusted death rate went up from 723 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014 to nearly 730 deaths per 100,000 in 2015. We do know that the suicide rate in the U.S. has surged to its highest level in almost three decades.

Rick Zeman writes: Since the beginning of the public Internet on Usenet and now following on comment boards worldwide, live the trolls, the online creatures dedicated to stirring up trouble with their versions of online flaming, fact-twisting, and overall being a menace to online society. Russia, by paying state-sponsored trolls, has elevated the troll to the level of professional propagandists spewing the party line. In neighboring Finland, a country again precariously balanced between Europe and the Russian bear, Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro's investigations have opened a new front in the (dis)information war (Warning: source may be paywalled) where "'There are so many layers of fakery you get lost,' said Ms. Aro, who was awarded the Finnish Grand Prize for Journalism in March," reports the NYT. All because "A member of the European Union with an 830-mile-long border with Russia, Finland has stayed outside the United States-led military alliance but, unnerved by Russian military actions in Ukraine and its saber-rattling in the Baltic Sea, has expanded cooperation with NATO and debated whether to apply for full membership." The NYT article explores many of the actions that the Russian propagandists use to keep Finland out of NATO, and some of the more indefensible ones directed personally at Aro. She says, "They get inside your head, and you start thinking: If I do this, what will the trolls do next?"

HughPickens.com writes: Ron Nixon reports at the NYT that facing a backlash over long security lines and management problems, TSA administrator Peter V. Neffenger has shaken up his leadership team, replacing the agency's top security official Kelly Hoggan (Warning: source may be paywalled) and adding a new group of administrators at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Beginning late that year, Hoggan received $90,000 in bonuses over a 13-month period, even though a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security showed that auditors were able to get fake weapons and explosives past security screeners 95 percent of the time in 70 covert tests. Hoggan's bonus was paid out in $10,000 increments, an arrangement that members of Congress have said was intended to disguise the payments. During a hearing of the House Oversight Committee two weeks ago, lawmakers grilled Mr. Neffenger about the bonus, which was issued before he joined the agency in July. Last week and over the weekend, hundreds of passengers, including 450 on American Airlines alone, missed flights because of waits of two or three hours in security lines, according to local news reports. Many of the passengers had to spend the night in the terminal sleeping on cots. The TSA has sent 58 additional security officers and four more bomb-sniffing dog teams to O'Hare. Several current and former TSA employees said the moves to replace Hoggan and add the new officials in Chicago, where passengers have endured hours long waits at security checkpoints, were insufficient. "The timing of this decision is too late to make a real difference for the summer," says Andrew Rhoades, an assistant federal security director at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport who testified his supervisor accused him of "going native" after attending a meeting at a local mosque and that TSA's alleged practice of "directed reassignments," or unwanted job transfers were intended to punish employees who speak their minds. "Neffenger is only doing this because the media and Congress are making him look bad."

Is breakfast the most important meal of the day? Plenty of people certainly believe that, but according to a new report, that notion is based on "misinterpreted research and biased studies." The New York Times has run a piece authored by Aaron E. Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, who looked into numerous studies -- and found flaws in them -- to conclude that breakfast isn't as important after all. (Could be paywalled; alternate source) He writes: The [reports] improperly used causal language to describe their results. They misleadingly cited others' results. And they also improperly used causal language in citing others' results. People believe, and want you to believe, that skipping breakfast is bad. Carroll also points out a conflict in many of such studies: most of them have been funded by the food industry. He concludes: The bottom line is that the evidence for the importance of breakfast is something of a mess. If you're hungry, eat it. But don't feel bad if you'd rather skip it, and don't listen to those who lecture you. Breakfast has no mystical powers.

An anonymous reader writes:Last year Rovio "cut 213 jobs, affecting all departments except those working on the film and its related projects," remembers VentureBeat, describing their effort to make a movie about three outcast birds on an island of happier birds who all meet in an anger management class. But "Since Rovio funded the entire film, the directors didn't have to answer to an executive committee or a board of trustees..." reports VentureBeat, quoting director Clay Kaytis as saying "We had to make ourselves happy... We were making the films for [ourselves] instead of for a larger entity that expects something in return."

After working for four years from a script by Jon Vitti (a writer for both The Simpsons and The Office), and funding a marketing onslaught that lasted nine months, Rovio finally saw their Angry Birds movie open in this weekend's #1 spot, according to the New York Times. "Most of the 'Angry Birds' financial risk fell to Rovio, the Finnish video game company, which paid $173 million to make and market the movie. As such, Rovio will receive the bulk of any profit."
In China, McDonald's released special Angry Birds burgers with red or green buns...which at least one patron complained made the buns look moldy.

HughPickens.com writes: Smallpox was one of the most devastating diseases humanity has ever faced, killing more than 300 million people in the 20th century alone. But thanks to the most successful global vaccination campaign in history, the disease was completely eradicated by 1980. By surrounding the last places on earth where smallpox was still occurring -- small villages in Asia and Africa -- and inoculating everyone in a wide circle around them, D. A. Henderson and the World Health Organization were able to starve the virus of hosts. Smallpox is highly contagious, but it is not spread by insects or animals. When it is gone from the human population, it is gone for good. But Errol Moris writes in the NYT that Henderson didn't really eliminate smallpox. In a handful of laboratories around the world, there are still stocks of smallpox, tucked away in one freezer or another. In 2014 the CDC announced that vials containing the deadly virus had been discovered in a cardboard box in a refrigerator located on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland. How can you say it's eliminated when it's still out there, somewhere? The demon in the freezer.

Some scientists say that these residual stocks of smallpox should not be destroyed because some ruthless super-criminal or rogue government might be working on a new smallpox, even more virulent than existing strains of the virus. We may need existing stocks to produce new vaccines to counteract the new viruses. Meanwhile, opponents of retention argue that there's neither need nor practical reason for keeping the virus around. In a letter to Science Magazine published in 1994, the Nobel laureate David Baltimore wrote, "I doubt that we so desperately need to study smallpox that it would be worth the risk inherent in the experimentation." It all comes down to the question of how best to protect ourselves against ourselves. Is the greater threat to humanity our propensity for error and stupidity, or for dastardly ingenuity?

HughPickens.com writes: Smallpox was one of the most devastating diseases humanity has ever faced, killing more than 300 million people in the 20th century alone. But thanks to the most successful global vaccination campaign in history, the disease was completely eradicated by 1980. By surrounding the last places on earth where smallpox was still occurring -- small villages in Asia and Africa -- and inoculating everyone in a wide circle around them, D. A. Henderson and the World Health Organization were able to starve the virus of hosts. Smallpox is highly contagious, but it is not spread by insects or animals. When it is gone from the human population, it is gone for good. But Errol Moris writes in the NYT that Henderson didn't really eliminate smallpox. In a handful of laboratories around the world, there are still stocks of smallpox, tucked away in one freezer or another. In 2014 the CDC announced that vials containing the deadly virus had been discovered in a cardboard box in a refrigerator located on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, Maryland. How can you say it's eliminated when it's still out there, somewhere? The demon in the freezer.

Some scientists say that these residual stocks of smallpox should not be destroyed because some ruthless super-criminal or rogue government might be working on a new smallpox, even more virulent than existing strains of the virus. We may need existing stocks to produce new vaccines to counteract the new viruses. Meanwhile, opponents of retention argue that there's neither need nor practical reason for keeping the virus around. In a letter to Science Magazine published in 1994, the Nobel laureate David Baltimore wrote, "I doubt that we so desperately need to study smallpox that it would be worth the risk inherent in the experimentation." It all comes down to the question of how best to protect ourselves against ourselves. Is the greater threat to humanity our propensity for error and stupidity, or for dastardly ingenuity?

HughPickens.com writes: Erik Eckholm reports in the NYT that the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has announced that it has imposed sweeping controls on the distribution of its products to ensure that none are used in lethal injections, a step that closes off the last remaining open-market source of drugs used in executions. "Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve," the company says, and "strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment." "With Pfizer's announcement, all F.D.A.-approved manufacturers of any potential execution drug have now blocked their sale for this purpose," says Maya Foa. "Executing states must now go underground if they want to get hold of medicines for use in lethal injection." The mounting difficulty in obtaining lethal drugs has already caused states to furtively scramble for supplies. Some states have used straw buyers or tried to import drugs from abroad that are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, only to see them seized by federal agents. Other states have experimented with new drug combinations, sometimes with disastrous results, such as the prolonged execution of Joseph Wood in Arizona in 2014, using the sedative midazolam. A few states have adopted the electric chair, firing squad or gas chamber as an alternative if lethal drugs are not available. Since Utah chooses to have a death penalty, "we have to have a means of carrying it out," said State Representative Paul Ray as he argued last year for authorization of the firing squad.

HughPickens.com writes: Jackie Calmes writes in the NYT that all over the country, employers say they see a disturbing downside of tighter labor markets as they try to rebuild from the worst recession since the Depression: the struggle to find workers who can pass a pre-employment drug test. The hurdle partly stems from the growing ubiquity of drug testing, at corporations with big human resources departments, in industries like trucking where testing is mandated by federal law for safety reasons, and increasingly at smaller companies. But data suggests employers' difficulties also reflect an increase in the use of drugs, especially marijuana -- employers' main gripe -- and also heroin and other opioid drugs much in the news. Data on the scope of the problem is sketchy because figures on job applicants who test positive for drugs miss the many people who simply skip tests they cannot pass. But Quest Diagnostics, which has compiled employer-testing data since 1988, documented a 10% increase in one year in the percentage of American workers who tested positive for illicit drugs -- up to 4.7 percent in 2014 from 4.3 percent in 2013.

With the software industry already plagued by a shortage of skilled workers, especially female programmers, some software companies think now would be the wrong time to institute drug testing for new employees, a move that would further limit the available talent pool. "The acceptability of at least marijuana has shifted dramatically over the last 20 years," says Carl Erickson. "If the standard limits those that have used marijuana in the last week, you're surely going to be limiting your pool of applicants." Erickson's decision not to drug test stems from a low risk of workplace injury for his workers combined with an unwillingness to pry into the personal lives of his employees. "My perspective on this is if they want to share their recreational habits with me, that's their prerogative, but I'm sure as hell not going to put them in a position to have to do it."

An anonymous reader writes: Chinese government is keeping an ever watchful eye on the companies doing business in the country, especially when foreign companies compete with local ones. To that end, the Chinese authorities have begun a security review among many different American technology companies like Apple and others. These, while mostly done out of the public sphere, seem to target issues like encryption and data storage. According to a report from the New York Times (paywalled; alternate source), government representatives have been questioning engineers and executives from different technology companies with regards to these issues for the last nine months. The so-called security reviews are being done by the Cyberspace Administration of China, with the government committee including experts tied to the country's military and security agencies.The Verge has more details.

An anonymous reader writes: The Tehran cybercrimes court said the country has arrested eight people working for online modeling agencies deemed to be "un-Islamic." The women models were arrested for starring in photos on Instagram and elsewhere without wearing their headscarves, which has been required in public since 1979. A total of 170 people have been identified by investigators for being involved in online modeling, including 59 photographers and make-up artists, 58 models and 51 fashion salon managers and designers. The court's prosecutor Javad Babaei announced the the threats on TV, claiming modeling agencies accounted for about 20 percent of posts on Instagram from Iran and that they had been "making and spreading immoral and un-Islamic culture and promiscuity." He added, "We carried out this plan in 2013 with Facebook, and now Instagram is the focus."

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The New York Times, summarized by Gizmodo: Earlier this week, over a hundred scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs held a secret meeting to discuss the possibility of creating a synthetic human genome. Creating a synthetic human genome differs from gene editing as scientists would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes, instead of patching a gene here and there. Synthetic genomics, unlike genetic modifications, in that it doesn't use naturally occurring genes. Instead, it relies on the custom-designed base pair series. Currently, customers view synthetic genomics as a way to build novel microbes and animals, but with humans it raises the prospect of custom-designed humans, without any parents. George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and one of the organizers of the proposed project, says the characterization was a misunderstanding, and that the project was aimed to generally improve the ability to synthesize long strands of DNA, which could be applied to various types of animals, plants and microbes. "They're painting a picture which I don't think represents the project," Dr. Church said in an interview. The project was initially called "HGP2: The Human Genome Synthesis Project." However, the name was later changed to "HGP-Write: Testing Large Synthetic Genomes In Cells." Why the change? Because the original headline was suppose to be headline-grabbing, or so they say.

speedplane writes: The New York Times is running a story on innovation over the past 150 years. [The story starts at the end of the American Civil War with the newly completed transcontinental railway in the 1870s. Then it highlights the profoundly different lifestyle of the 1920s, the end of 'The Great War' and the beginning of the Great Depression. By the 1970s, many of the transportation and communication changes from the 20s became fundamental parts of daily life. The story ends in 2016, an era in which human life has changed the most in the last 46 years.]

We're in the golden age of innovation, an era in which digital technology is transforming the underpinnings of human existence. Or so a techno-optimist might argue. We're in a depressing era in which innovation has slowed and living standards are barely rising. That's what some skeptical economists believe. The truth is, this isn't a debate that can be settled objectively.

What do slashdotters think is the greatest era of innovation?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple Inc. invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-sharing service Didi, making one of its biggest bets on software and services and dealing a blow to Uber Technologies Inc.'s ambitions in the country. The iPhone maker will help Uber's largest rival build up a ride-sharing platform that handles more than 11 million rides a day and serves about 300 million users across China, Didi said in a statement on Friday. Executive Officer Tim Cook has highlighted higher-margin services as a growth area and suggested he would use some of its $200 billion-plus cash hoard for investments. The investment in one of China's largest online companies will allow Apple to forge alliances in its single largest market outside of the United States. Didi, incorporated as Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc., is in the process of raising more than $2 billion at a valuation of about $25 billion, people familiar with the matter have said. It operates in 400 Chinese cities and works with more than 14 million Chinese car owners. The company is Uber's most potent rival and has formed an international coalition with Lyft Inc. in the U.S., India's Ola and Southeast Asia's Grab to fight the globally expanding San Francisco firm. Apple is hoping to reinvigorate lackluster iPhone sales in China with its $1 billion investment in Didi. The last big investment the company made was when it acquired Beats for $3 billion in 2014.

HughPickens.com writes: According to a new study, the chance of an obese person attaining normal body weight is 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women, increasing to 1 in 1,290 for men and 1 in 677 for women with severe obesity, suggesting that current weight management programs focused on dieting and exercise are not effective in tackling obesity. Now neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt writes in the New York Times that "in the long run dieting is rarely effective, doesn't reliably improve health and does more harm than good". And according to Aamodt, the root of the problem is not willpower but neuroscience.

Metabolic suppression is one of several powerful tools that the brain uses to keep the body within a certain weight range, called the set point. The range, which varies from person to person, is determined by genes and life experience. When dieters' weight drops below it, they not only burn fewer calories but also produce more hunger-inducing hormones and find eating more rewarding. If someone starts at 120 pounds and drops to 80, her brain rightfully declares a starvation state of emergency, using every method available to get that weight back up to normal. This coordinated brain response is a major reason that dieters find weight loss so hard to achieve and maintain. According to Aamodt dieting can actually lead to weight gain because dieting is stressful. Calorie restriction produces stress hormones, which act on fat cells to increase the amount of abdominal fat. Such fat is associated with medical problems like diabetes and heart disease, regardless of overall weight.... Aamodt recommends mindful eating -- paying attention to signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the brain's weight-regulation system commands.

Reader Koreantoast writes: The New York Times posted an interesting thought piece (paywalled, this link could help) on the changing nature of manufacturing globally and the impact it has on modern politics and economic development. Although manufacturing productivity has jumped tremendously over the last several decades, the overall global pool of manufacturing jobs is shrinking as automation and new industrial technologies has increased the production and supply of manufactured goods with fewer people at a rate faster than global demand can absorb. The analogy is the agricultural revolution of the last several centuries where greater amounts of food are being produced by fewer and fewer farmers, displacing many of them. How will industrialized nations manage the growing number of displaced, blue collar labor? Bigger impact globally is that the shrinking pool of manufacturing jobs globally is closing the traditional route of export-oriented manufacturing economy that many nations, particularly in East Asia, were able to use to lift their nations out of poverty. What happens to those nations that missed the boat?"The likelihood that we will get a manufacturing recovery is close to nil," Professor Stiglitz said. "We are more likely to have a smaller share of a shrinking pie."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook engineers in London are working on a standalone camera app with a big live-streaming component. Similar to Snapchat, the app would open straight into a camera to foster immediate capturing and posting of photos and videos, as well as letting users stream via Facebook Live. With billions of smartphones in the world and near-ubiquitous high-speed data connections, Facebook sees a huge opportunity to get its 1.6 billion users sharing more than ever before. A camera app may help the company do that, and better compete with Snapchat at the same time. Facebook has recently rolled out a major live video update allowing anyone to post live streams of themselves to their timeline. Previously, only celebrities and public figures were allowed to use the feature. With this new Facebook Live update and standalone camera app reportedly in the works, the only thing holding Mark Zuckerberg back with his plan to triple the size of his social network is affordable internet.

In what appears to be a significant shift in its tactic to battle against the terrorist organization, the U.S. has begun launching cyberattacks against ISIS (non-paywall link). The New York Times reports that the Department of Defense's Cyber Command unit is mounting cyberattacks against the terrorist organization. The Cyber Command unit aims to stop the organization from spreading its message. The Times reports: The goal of the new campaign is to disrupt the ability of the Islamic State to spread its message, attract new adherents, circulate orders from commanders and carry out day-to-day functions, like paying its fighters. A benefit of the administration's exceedingly rare public discussion of the campaign, officials said, is to rattle the Islamic State's commanders, who have begun to realize that sophisticated hacking efforts are manipulating their data. Potential recruits may also be deterred if they come to worry about the security of their communications with the militant group. "We are dropping cyberbombs," Robert O. Work, deputy secretary of defense said. "We have never done that before."

HughPickens.com writes: There's good news for aging Americans who may have damaged their hearing by attending one too many rock concerts when they were young. Andrew Pollack writes at the NYT that the consumer electronics industry is encroaching on the hearing aid business, offering products that are far less expensive and available without the involvement of audiologists or other professionals. The new devices are forcing a re-examination of the entire system for providing hearing aids, which critics say is too costly and cumbersome, hindering access to devices vital for the growing legions of older Americans. "The audiology profession is obviously scared, for good reason, right now," says Abram Bailey.

Hearing aids cost an average of nearly $2,400 each, or close to $5,000 a pair, according to a White House advisory group, and Medicare does not pay for them, nor do most insurers. By contrast, the consumer devices are not regulated and sell for a few hundred dollars apiece, at most. Hearing aid manufacturers say that diagnosing and treating hearing loss is too complex for consumers to do using consumer devices, without the aid of a professional. But sound amplifiers have been around for years and they are growing in sophistication, taking advantage of signal processing chips developed for phones, Bluetooth headsets and computers. The devices include the Smart Listening System from Soundhawk, which sells at $400 for a single ear; the Bean from Etymotic Research, at $300; the CS50+ from Sound World Solutions at $350; and the Crystal Ear from NeutronicEar, at $545. "To me it was a reasonable investment to experiment with," says Ira Dolich, 81, who bought the Soundhawk device, which he can adjust by himself using his smartphone. "I've been pretty pleased with it," he said.

HughPickens.com writes: There's good news for aging Americans who may have damaged their hearing by attending one too many rock concerts when they were young. Andrew Pollack writes at the NYT that the consumer electronics industry is encroaching on the hearing aid business, offering products that are far less expensive and available without the involvement of audiologists or other professionals. The new devices are forcing a re-examination of the entire system for providing hearing aids, which critics say is too costly and cumbersome, hindering access to devices vital for the growing legions of older Americans. "The audiology profession is obviously scared, for good reason, right now," says Abram Bailey.

Hearing aids cost an average of nearly $2,400 each, or close to $5,000 a pair, according to a White House advisory group, and Medicare does not pay for them, nor do most insurers. By contrast, the consumer devices are not regulated and sell for a few hundred dollars apiece, at most. Hearing aid manufacturers say that diagnosing and treating hearing loss is too complex for consumers to do using consumer devices, without the aid of a professional. But sound amplifiers have been around for years and they are growing in sophistication, taking advantage of signal processing chips developed for phones, Bluetooth headsets and computers. The devices include the Smart Listening System from Soundhawk, which sells at $400 for a single ear; the Bean from Etymotic Research, at $300; the CS50+ from Sound World Solutions at $350; and the Crystal Ear from NeutronicEar, at $545. "To me it was a reasonable investment to experiment with," says Ira Dolich, 81, who bought the Soundhawk device, which he can adjust by himself using his smartphone. "I've been pretty pleased with it," he said.

The New York Times has run a piece on its "Tech Fix" section, in which it argues, citing a user's experience, why skipping an upgrade might not be a bad idea, and how you could hold on to your existing device for a little longer. The story revolves around Vincent Lai, who dug up a Palm Treo, a smartphone that was disconnected last decade, and found that with little tweaks, the phone still had some life in it. From the article: Mr. Lai's behavior might be extreme, but his experience with the Palm Treo illustrates there is another way: If you simply put some maintenance into electronics as you would a car, you can stay happy with your gadgets for years. It is part of a movement of anti-consumerism, or the notion of cherishing what you have rather than incessantly buying new stuff. Signs of this philosophy are spreading: Industry data suggests that consumers are waiting longer to upgrade to new phones than they have in the past. [...] When smartphones and tablets were fairly sluggish and limited in abilities compared with computers, there was a compelling reason to buy a new mobile device every few years. But now the mobile gadgets have become so fast and capable that you can easily keep them much longer. "A five-year-old computer is still completely fine now," Mr. Wiens said. "We're starting to hit that same plateau with phones now."The article also shares some tips such as clearing up storage and getting your device's battery replaced -- which costs roughly $20 to $40 -- that can help you get the max out of your phone and tablet. There's one more aspect, which the aforementioned article doesn't talk about. If you have an old iDevice -- iPhone or iPad -- upgrading to the latest available version of the operating system could substantially slow it up. Not upgrading, however, exposes your device to a range of security attacks. It's a tough choice.

Google now faces more competition charges in the European Union. The EU has accused Google of skewing the market against competitors with its Android mobile operating system. The 28-member state bloc's antitrust commissioner concluded in a preliminary decision that the search giant has abused its dominant position in the market by imposing restrictions on Android device makers. "What we found is that Google pursues an overall strategy on mobile devices to protect and expand its dominant position in internet search," said Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief. "The commission is concerned that Google's behaviour has harmed consumers by restricting competition and innovation," she added. "Rival search engines and mobile operating systems have not been able to compete on their merits. This is not good." Google has three months to respond to the aforementioned charges. The New York Times reports: Europe's antitrust charges might not necessarily lead to financial or other penalties against Google. If it is found to have broken the region's rules, though, the company may face fines of up to 10 percent of its global revenue, or roughly $7 billion, the maximum allowable amount. Google denies that it has broken European competition rules, saying that its dealings with cellphone manufacturers like Samsung and HTC, among others, are voluntary, and that rival mobile services are readily available on its Android software.According to EU, Google has breached antitrust rules by:1. requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps; 2. preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code; 3. giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices."The joke in Google's cafeteria today will be "let them use bing," said Andrew Parker, VC. "So disappointing that browser dominance on Android is the only thing that the EU can get worked up about," Blaine Cook, co-founder of Poetica noted. "The European Commission's statement of objections against Android lends further credibility to Oracle's $9B copyright claim," Florian Mueller, the founder of FOSS Patents blog wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed: A high ranking technology official with the FBI told members of Congress Tuesday that the agency is incapable of cracking locked phones and devices on its own, even with additional resources. Amy Hess, the agency's executive assistant director for science and technology told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that encrypted communications continue to pose a challenge to the American law enforcement, and to the safety of the American public. But when asked by lawmakers to provide a practical solution beyond the FBI's talking points, she said that the cooperation of technology companies would be necessary. According to the New York Times, "The FBI defended its hiring of a third-party company to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last year's San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting, telling some lawmakers on Tuesday that it needed to join with partners in the rarefied world of for-profit hackers as technology companies increasingly resist their demands for consumer information." They are stressing the importance of cooperation with tech companies and "third parties" to help fight terrorism, claiming they do not have the capabilities and resources available to crack encrypted devices. Congress is currently debating potential legislation on encryption.

An anonymous reader writes: Families of Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack victims are pressuring Obama to support legislation allowing them to sue the Saudi government. A recent "60 Minutes" investigation has stirred up some controversy by looking at possible links between Saudi officials and the 9/11 hijackers, which revealed that new information may be hiding in a classified section of a Congressional report. The Saudis said in a report in the New York Times that they might sell "up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States" if the bill passes. The bill in question is being considered by Congress and it would permit lawsuits against countries that "contribute material support or resources" for "acts of terrorism." Van Auken, who is among those convinced that the 9/11 hijackers were helped by Saudi agents, said, "It feels like blackmail. The government, the president is siding with Saudi Arabia over the 9/11 families. If someone you loved was murdered and the person was just able to go away Scott free, would you be okay with that? I don't think anybody would." Last week the royal embassy of Saudi Arabia said, "The 9/11 commission confirmed that there is no evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia supported or funded Al Qaeda."

An anonymous reader writes: The Sinosphere blog at the NYT reports that Twitter has appointed Kathy Chen as Chief for the Greater China Region. Ms. Chen served as an engineer in the Chinese military in the 1980s. After that, she was involved in a joint venture that was partly owned by the country's powerful domestic security ministry. She posted on Friday a message of cooperation to China Central Television, the state-run broadcaster. The language resembled President Xi Jinping's call to the Chinese media to "tell the China story well." Twitter has been and remains blocked in China by the "Great Firewall".Quartz has more details.

An anonymous reader writes: The Sinosphere blog at the NYT reports that Twitter has appointed Kathy Chen as Chief for the Greater China Region. Ms. Chen served as an engineer in the Chinese military in the 1980s. After that, she was involved in a joint venture that was partly owned by the country's powerful domestic security ministry. She posted on Friday a message of cooperation to China Central Television, the state-run broadcaster. The language resembled President Xi Jinping's call to the Chinese media to "tell the China story well." Twitter has been and remains blocked in China by the "Great Firewall".Quartz has more details.

Wouldn't it be great if you could read a novel in an hour or two? Certainly, many people do that. The phenomenon of speed reading is nothing new with plenty of people claiming that they have grown habituated -- or taught themselves into -- reading things in an accelerated fashion. Not everyone -- including yours truly -- is a fan of this. There are several studies that suggest that 'speed reading' result in people missing out on lots of tidbits. A New York Times article, published Friday, also suggests the same. Jeffrey M. Zacks, and Rebecca Treiman, in an op-ed, citing a recent article in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, claim that "it's extremely unlikely you can greatly improve your reading speed without missing out on a lot of meaning." They write: Certainly, readers are capable of rapidly scanning a text to find a specific word or piece of information, or to pick up a general idea of what the text is about. But this is skimming, not reading. We can definitely skim, and it may be that speed-reading systems help people skim better.Which brings us to the question: What's your view on speed reading?

An anonymous reader shares a NYTimes article: In early 2003, F.B.I. agents hit a roadblock in a secret investigation, called Operation Trail Mix. For months, agents had been intercepting phone calls and emails belonging to members of an animal welfare group that was believed to be sabotaging operations of a company that was using animals to test drugs. But encryption software had made the emails unreadable. So investigators tried something new. They persuaded a judge to let them remotely, and secretly, install software on the group's computers to help get around the encryption. That effort, revealed in newly declassified and released records, shows in new detail how F.B.I. hackers worked to defeat encryption more than a decade before the agency's recent fight with Apple over access to a locked iPhone. The Trail Mix case was, in some ways, a precursor to the Apple dispute. In both cases, the agents could not decode the data themselves, but found a clever workaround. The Trail Mix records also reveal what is believed to be the first example of the F.B.I. remotely installing surveillance software, known as spyware or malware, as part of a criminal wiretap. 'This was the first time that the Department of Justice had ever approved such an intercept of this type,' an F.B.I. agent wrote in a 2005 document summing up the case.

An anonymous reader writes: During an interview with Fox News, President Obama said "There's classified, and then there's classified" when trying to answer questions about an ongoing investigation about Hillary Clinton and her emails. Techdirt writes, "Clinton sent, received and stored classified info on a private email server. But some classified info is more equal than others. It all depends on who has it and how the current administration feels about that person. Clinton playing fast and loose with classified info is subject to an entirely different standard than the large number of whistleblowers the Obama administration has prosecuted over the years." President Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that while Hillary Clinton had been careless in managing her emails as secretary of state, she would never intentionally do anything to endanger the country. Obama says, "There's stuff that is really top-secret, and there's stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source." Basically, classification means all things to all people, as long as it allows officials and agencies to control narratives and disrupt public accountability.

HughPickens.com writes: A common urban myth is that many fathers are cuckolded into raising children that genetically are not their own -- a fear fueled by the paternity tests that have become a standard staple of gossip magazines, talk shows, and TV series. Now, Carl Zimmer reports at the New York Times that our obsession with cuckolded fathers is seriously overblown as a number of recent genetic studies have challenged the notion that mistaken paternity is commonplace. It wasn't until DNA sequencing emerged in the 1990s that paternity tests earned the legal system's confidence. Labs were able to compare DNA markers in children to those of their purported fathers to see if they matched. As the lab tests piled up, researchers collated the results and came to a startling conclusion: 10 percent to 30 percent of the tested men were not the biological fathers of their children. There's only one problem with these previous studies: the results didn't come from a random sample of people. The people who ordered the tests already had reason to doubt paternity.

In a 2013 study, Dr. Maarten H.D. Larmuseau used Belgium's detailed birth records to reconstruct large family genealogies reaching back four centuries. Then the scientists tracked down living male descendants and asked to sequence their Y chromosomes. Y chromosomes are passed down in almost identical form from fathers to sons. Men who are related to the same male ancestor should also share his Y chromosome, providing that some unknown father didn't introduce his own Y [chromosome] somewhere along the way. Comparing the chromosomes of living related men, Larmuseau came up with a cuckoldry rate of less than 1 percent. Similar studies have generally produced the same low results in such countries as Spain, Italy and Germany, as well as agricultural villages in Mali. "The observed low EPP rates challenge the idea that women routinely 'shop around' for good genes by engaging in extra-pair copulations," concludes Larmuseau . "The (potential) genetic benefits of extra-pair children are unlikely to be offset by the (potential) costs of being caught, particularly in such a long-lived species as humans with heavy offspring dependence and massive parental investment."

An anonymous reader writes: 32.9 percent of the 2,103 underground wells tested in China received grade 4 for water quality -- meaning they're only fit for industrial use and are not safe for drinking water. Another 47.3 percent received a grade 5 for water quality. "These latest statistics are an indicator of how bad the underground water quality is. The sources of pollution are widespread and include a lot of agricultures. I think that would be the main source of pollution," Dabo Guan, professor at the University of East Anglia in Britain, told the New York Times. "From my point of view, this shows how water is the biggest environmental issue in China. People in the cities, they see air pollution every day, so it creates huge pressure from the public. But in the cities, people don't see how bad the water pollution is," said Guan. According to statistics from the country's Ministry of Water Resources, 70 percent of lakes used as a water source, 60 percent of underground water, and 11 percent of water in reservoirs did not meet the country's safety standards. Even though the study measured water sources close to the surface, the results are shocking and depict the adverse effects air pollution has in China currently and in years to come.

An anonymous reader shares a report on NPR.org: Poor people who reside in expensive, well-educated cities such as San Francisco tend to live longer than low-income people in less affluent places, according to a study of more than a billion Social Security and tax records. The study, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, bolsters what was already well-known -- the poor tend to have shorter lifespans than those with more money. But it also says that among low-income people, big disparities exist in life expectancy from place to place, said Raj Chetty, professor of economics at Stanford University. "There are some places where the poor are doing quite well, gaining just as much in terms of life span as the rich, but there are other places where they're actually going in the other direction, where the poor are living shorter lives today than they did in the past," Chetty said, in an interview with NPR.The New York Times' take on the same study: New York is a city with some of the worst income inequality in the country. But when it comes to inequality of life spans, it's one of the best. Impoverished New Yorkers tend to live far longer than their counterparts in other American cities, according to a detailed new research of Social Security and earnings records published Monday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. They still die sooner than their richer neighbors, but the city's life-expectancy gap was smaller in 2014 than nearly everywhere else, and it has shrunk since 2001 even as gaps grew nationwide. That trend may appear surprising. New York is one of the country's most unequal and expensive cities, where the poor struggle to find affordable housing and the money and time to take care of themselves.

An anonymous reader writes: In 1936 a reporter watched Donald Trump's uncle John, an MIT professor of engineering, as he was struck by two high-voltage sparks while demonstrating the grounding of an new X-ray machine which could generate a million volts of power. And immediately after Nikola Tesla's death in 1943, the FBI called John G. Trump to review the scientific papers Tesla left behind, according to a new article in The New Yorker. They joke that now John's nephew Donald "seldom sounds as ungrounded as when he invokes Professor Trump, the younger brother of his father, Fred," while campaigning for president. But while comparing the candidate's statements to the historical record, they conclude that "John Trump really does seem to have been a brilliant scientist," noting that he performed both radar and short-wave research for the allies during World War II and helped design medical X-ray machines.

An anonymous reader quotes an article on Gizmodo: Everyone loves an upgrade -- even POTUS. The New York Times reports that the White House has recently undergone a technological transformation, though it may not sound too impressive to many of us: Its employees are now equipped with modern laptops, iPhones and even... color printers. [...] Employees have new computers with "fast, solid-state drives and modern processors," according to the newspaper, along with color printers. There's a new phone system and many staff now tote iPhones. The Wi-Fi has been upgraded, so it's now fast enough to live-stream video. And security has been increased too, with a new software system for managing visitors and a chip-based card system which is used by staffers instead of passwords.

theodp writes: Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of the arrest of Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, at his cabin in rural Montana. Kaczynski, a brilliant mathematician turned recluse, spread destruction and death throughout the U.S by mailing bombs to his victims, most of whom worked at UNiversities or in the Airline industry -- hence the "UNAbomber" moniker -- from 1978 until his arrest in Lincoln, MT, on April 3, 1996. For years, the only clue to his identity was a single now-iconic sketch of a shadowy, hooded figure. The big break in the case came in 1995, when David Kaczynski recognized the ramblings of the Unabomber's 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto entitled Industrial Society and its Future, which was published in the Washington Post, as those of his older brother Theodore and tipped off the FBI. (Kaczynski warns of a world of intelligent machines where "the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines.") Kaczynski, now 73, is currently serving a life sentence without parole at the so-called Supermax prison in Colorado. Kaczynski's listing in the Harvard alumni directory for the class of 1962 gives his occupation as 'prisoner' and cites "eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998" in the awards section.

HughPickens.com writes: Andy Newman writes at the New York Times about an exhibit at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City that lets users walk a proverbial mile in their elders' orthopedic shoes and experience the stooped shuffle, the halting speech, and the dimming senses of an 85-year old man. It is not a very pleasant experience. An attendant cranks up a fader and your vision dissolves into melty, grayed-out blobs, like a memorably unvivid psychedelic experience, more knobs twiddle, and your hearing is subsumed in a fog of tinnitus, muffling and distortion. Loaded with hardware and a computer, the suit itself weighs 40 pounds, distributed as uncomfortably as possible. "It's going to get much worse," promises Bran Ferren, the suit's inventor. "You haven't lived."

According to Newman, in just 10 minutes, the aging suit induced a remarkable amount of frustration, depression and hopelessness. There are entire realms of wretchedness attendant upon owning and operating an 85-year-old body that the exhibit does not even touch upon. Comprehensive sagging, internal and external. Pain in places you did not know could hurt. Difficulty urinating. Difficulty not urinating. Watching your friends die off. Watching yourself become irrelevant, an object of pity or puzzlement if acknowledged at all. By allowing a younger generation to feel the effects of aging firsthand, the suit provides a newfound perspective that hopefully inspires a conversation with loved ones about getting older so, collectively, family and friends can better prepare for the future. If doing even the most basic tasks of daily living is this much trouble, you wonder, why bother? But it also makes you a little less likely to lose patience and a little more likely to feel empathy with the older people in your life. "My father, Aaron Newman, happens to be 85," says Newman. "I called him up. I described the treadmill experience and asked if that sounded about right." "No," he said. "It's much worse."

An anonymous reader quotes an article on The New York Times about the death of Zaha Hadid: Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-British architect whose curving, elongated structures left a mark on skylines around the world, and who was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, her profession's highest honor, died on Thursday in Miami. She was 65. Ms. Hadid "contracted bronchitis earlier this week and suffered a sudden heart attack while being treated in hospital," her office, Zaha Hadid Architects in London, said in a statement. [...] She was also a role model and inspiration for generations of young architects, men and women, who wanted to become Ms. Hadid: an architect of boundless ambition, a celebrity, and an artist with big ideas who won commissions for some of the world's big, flashiest projects by the sheer force of her intelligence, creativity and personality. Ms. Hadid epitomized an era when architects became global brands. Her brand promised buildings of extravagant sculptural invention, spectacles of curving, swooping, unprecedented forms. She represented the epitome of the art of so-called parametric design, by which architects, aided by sophisticated computer programs, could animate buildings into new shapes. You will want to read her profile on The Guardian.

An anonymous reader writes: From Q1 of 2012 to Q1 of 2016, Netflix has added an incredible 111 original series and films. The numbers translate to an average quarterly growth rate of 34.22% and an average annual growth rate of 185.41%. And there is reason to believe that future growth rates could be even higher -- with competition coming from all sides, Netflix is likely to keep pushing more and more cash into original content. Those wondering why Netflix has grown increasingly interested in owning the shows it airs, you have to realize that not long ago the streaming company was struggling to snap any good TV show from cable channels. The New York Times' profile of House of Cards' Beau Willimon, from 2014, sheds more light into this : Around three years ago, Netflix realized it had a problem: It was paying large sums to license other people's content -- TV shows and movies produced by other companies -- in order to then show them to you, the Netflix subscriber, at home. This initially proved successful, but there were two troubling aspects to this model: 1) It left Netflix very vulnerable to competition, since the shows and movies it licensed could, theoretically, be licensed by anyone willing to outbid them, and 2) the most popular TV shows, episodic dramas like "CSI" and sitcoms like "The Big Bang Theory," were already being sold for huge deals into syndication at basic cable channels like TBS and USA. What was left to Netflix were the kind of serialized shows that don't typically play well in syndication, like "Lost" and "Breaking Bad," which have complicated story arcs that compel a viewer to watch all the episodes in order. Traditionally, while these kinds of serialized shows could be big hits in their initial broadcast runs, they proved tough sells to aftermarkets, precisely because of the demands they placed on the audience.