Slashdot Mirror

The Washington Post reports that all Los Angeles public schools have been closed for the day after a "'credible threat' of violence to students at numerous schools in the sprawling district, and a schools official confirmed that it was a bomb threat to the school district." According to the Houston Chronicle, a law enforcement official speaking anonymously with the Associated Press said that the threat "was emailed to a school board member and appeared to come from overseas. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation. The official says the threat was sent late Monday. Superintendent Ramon Cortines says the threat was made against students at many of the district's schools." The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school system in the U.S., is no picnic to close; the New York Times notes that the closure throws into disarray "the lives of millions of Angelenos — students, parents, teachers and other school staff members."

An anonymous reader writes: On Saturday, world leaders completed an ambitious international agreement to address climate change. But when the officials received the first copy of what was supposed to be the final draft, a one-word mistake threatened to derail their progress. Part of the agreement involved language that encouraged wealthy nations to provide monetary aid to poorer nations in order to help transition to more sustainable systems. But the draft used the word "shall," which would have made it a legally-binding requirement. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pushed back on the change, noting that previous versions of the document had used the word "should" instead. Officials tried to quickly figure out whether the swap had been made intentionally. Ultimately, they classified it as a typo, and hurriedly prepared a corrected version of the document, which was adopted without incident.

An anonymous reader writes: As more and more people live closer together in tightly packed subdivisions, the mental stress of noise becomes a serious issue. Noise nuisance complaints are on the rise, litigation increasing. We try to tune it out, yet the stress it causes is still present, and there's seemingly no way around it." Six months ago a new neighbor moved in next door who has two dogs, one of which barks incessantly with a high pitched yip that is driving my wife crazy and making it difficult for me to read or work on the computer. I've already talked to my neighbor and he will bring the dog inside but three days later it starts again. What is a cost effective technical solution to knock 10 or 20 dB off the exterior noise? soundproof windows, an interior acoustic blanket,a sound blocking fence, a sound absorbing fence, planting foliage or noise cancelling headphones, or something else. I'm sure I'm not the first slashdotter to have this problem. What has worked for you?

An anonymous reader writes: Two of the largest and oldest chemical companies, Dow and DuPont, have planned a merger. Dow's 53,000 employees will join forces with DuPont's 63,000 employees, which will challenge Germany's BASF for the biggest chemical company in the world. Not for long, though — once the merger is complete, they will split up into three. One will focus on agriculture, one on materials science, and one on specialty products. According to the press release, it will indeed be a merger of equals, with both companies comprising 50% of the new DowDuPont behemoth. "Despite the eventual breakup, the deal would undergo rigorous antitrust scrutiny for all three companies, particularly the agricultural chemicals company. Still, the companies did not expect that the deal would require much in the way of other divestitures to satisfy regulators' concerns."

An anonymous reader writes: In the 1950s, Panama Disease wiped out the dominant type of banana that was imported worldwide. Banana-growers had to switch to a different strain, the Cavendish banana, at great expense. Now, a new study finds that a more virulent strain of the disease is directly threatening the Cavendish banana. Banana plants are dying from it throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia. It hasn't reached Latin America yet, which is good — that's where the vast majority of the world's bananas are produced. But the researchers say it's just a matter of time. "The latest strain is likely to put the risks of monoculture on display once more. And while scientists might find or breed a better one in the mean time, the reality is that this time around we don't have a formidable replacement that's resistant to the new strain of Panama Disease. Once it reaches Latin America, as it is expected to, it could be only a matter of decades before the most popular banana on the planet once again disappears."

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a ruling in favor of former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle — the so-called "cannibal cop." In 2012, Valle was fired and arrested for going online and talking about his fantasies, which included kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, and cannibalism. He was later convicted in a jury trial. A district court judge overturned the conviction, but the government appealed, hoping to make it stick. The Appeals Court has now affirmed Valle's acquittal. In the ruling (PDF), the court notes, "We are loathe to give the government the power to punish us for our thoughts and not our actions. That includes the power to criminalize an individual's expression of sexual fantasies, no matter how perverse or disturbing. Fantasizing about committing a crime, even a crime of violence against a real person whom you know, is not a crime." The court also addressed the government's questionable efforts to use the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to increase the severity of Valle's punishment: "While the Government might promise that it would not prosecute an individual for checking Facebook at work, we are not at liberty to take prosecutors at their word in such matters."

trbdavies writes: Reporting from the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) gene-editing summit in D.C., the Washington Post quotes Harvard genetics professor George Church as expressing "confidence that in just five or six years he will be able to reverse the aging process in human beings." He says: "A scenario is, everyone takes gene therapy — not just curing rare diseases like cystic fibrosis, but diseases that everyone has, like aging," CRISPR is a powerful technology, but many at the summit have expressed caution about both the ethics and the feasibility of using it to cure disease. The story quotes Klaus Rajewsky, of the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine saying "We have become masters in the art of manipulating genes, but our understanding of their function and interaction is far more limited."

Earthquake Retrofit writes: The Washington Post has a story about Gordon Pennycook, a doctorate student at the University of Waterloo who studies why some people are more easily duped than others. "Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena" was one of many randomly generated sentences Pennycook, along with a team of researchers at the University of Waterloo, used in a new, four-part study (PDF) put together to gauge how receptive people are to nonsense.

Those more receptive to bull**** are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions [beliefs in things for which there is no empirical evidence (i.e. that prayers have the ability to heal)] and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.

An anonymous reader writes: The city of Los Angeles is considering a new plan to fight prostitution: sending letters to men who solicit prostitutes in the hopes that the letters are seen by family members. Why not just arrest them while they're doing it? Because these letters aren't being sent to the houses of men who were convicted, or even arrested. Instead, automated license plate readers would scan the cars driving down streets known to have a prostitution problem, and the letters would be sent to the address associated with those vehicles. An article about the plan says, "There isn't 'potential' for abuse here, this is a legislated abuse of technology that is already controversial when it's used by police for the purpose of seeking stolen vehicles, tracking down fugitives and solving specific crimes."

An anonymous reader sends word that a three-day summit has begun in Washington to discuss the future of genetic engineering. It has a particular focus on the CRISPR technique, which has made gene editing quicker and more robust than ever before. "The reason CRISPR is so controversial is that it works well on 'germline' cells, such as sperm, eggs and embryonic cells, and the genetic editing results in heritable traits. Many scientific organizations have called for a time-out on any experiments on human cells, fearing that this crosses into dicey ethical territory. This meeting in Washington could potentially generate a new call for restraint, or some guidelines in how to handle the explosive technology." Many scientists, lawyers, and policymakers are present at the summit to try to reach consensus on how the scientific community should proceed with such research, and how the fruits of their research should be used. Professor Alta Charo said, "The more we can have effective systems for responsible oversight for the development and deployment of a technology, the more we can take chances. We have the chance to back up at the end, and change course."

HughPickens.com writes: Danielle Douglas-Gabriel writes in the Washington Post that Purdue University is partnering with Vemo Education, a Reston-based financial services firm, to create income-share agreements, or ISAs, that its students can tap to pay for tuition, room and board. In return, students would pay a percentage of their earnings after graduation for a set number of years, replenishing the fund for future investments. Purdue president Mitch Daniels calls the contracts a constructive addition to today's government loan programs and perhaps the only option for students and families who have low credit ratings and extra financial need. "From the student's standpoint, ISAs assure a manageable payback amount, never more than the agreed portion of their incomes. Best of all, they shift the risk of career shortcomings from student to investor: If the graduate earns less than expected, it is the investors who are disappointed; if the student decides to go off to find himself in Nepal instead of working, the loss is entirely on the funding providers, who will presumably price that risk accordingly when offering their terms. This is true "debt-free" college."

However some observers worry that students pursuing profitable degrees in engineering or business would get better repayment terms than those studying to become nurses or teachers. "Income share agreements have the potential to create another option for students looking to pay for college while seeking assurances they will not be overwhelmed by future payments," says Robert Kelchen. "However, given the current generosity of federal income-based repayment programs and the likely hesitation of those who expect six-figure salaries to sign away a percentage of their income for years to come, the market for these programs may be somewhat limited."

HughPickens.com writes: Danielle Douglas-Gabriel writes in the Washington Post that Purdue University is partnering with Vemo Education, a Reston-based financial services firm, to create income-share agreements, or ISAs, that its students can tap to pay for tuition, room and board. In return, students would pay a percentage of their earnings after graduation for a set number of years, replenishing the fund for future investments. Purdue president Mitch Daniels calls the contracts a constructive addition to today's government loan programs and perhaps the only option for students and families who have low credit ratings and extra financial need. "From the student's standpoint, ISAs assure a manageable payback amount, never more than the agreed portion of their incomes. Best of all, they shift the risk of career shortcomings from student to investor: If the graduate earns less than expected, it is the investors who are disappointed; if the student decides to go off to find himself in Nepal instead of working, the loss is entirely on the funding providers, who will presumably price that risk accordingly when offering their terms. This is true "debt-free" college."

However some observers worry that students pursuing profitable degrees in engineering or business would get better repayment terms than those studying to become nurses or teachers. "Income share agreements have the potential to create another option for students looking to pay for college while seeking assurances they will not be overwhelmed by future payments," says Robert Kelchen. "However, given the current generosity of federal income-based repayment programs and the likely hesitation of those who expect six-figure salaries to sign away a percentage of their income for years to come, the market for these programs may be somewhat limited."

HughPickens.com writes: Eugene Volokh reports at the Washington Post that in a stunning policy shift, The Montana Standard, a daily newspaper in Butte, Montana, has decided to replace commenters' pseudonyms with their real names. "The kicker here is that the change is retroactive," writes Paul Alan Levy. "Apparently unwilling to part with the wealth of comments that are already posted on its web site under the old policy, but also, apparently, unwilling to configure its software so that comments posted before the new policy is implemented remain under the chosen screen names, the Standard announces that past comments will suddenly appear using the users' real names unless users contact the paper no later than December 26 to ask that their comments be removed." In a November 12 editorial outlining the new real-name policy, the newspaper said, "We have encountered consistent difficulty with posts that exceed the bounds of civil discourse — as have many sites where comments from anonymous posters are allowed."

The paper's new policy has proven controversial among readers. "This is the end of open and honest comments on this site," wrote one user, who goes by the name BGF. "It is easy to put your name to your comments if you are retired. But it is another thing altogether if you have to worry about upsetting your peers and bosses at work." The newspaper editor, David McCumber, says he has extensively investigated the feasibility of configuring the newspaper's software to keep comments posted before the new policy is implemented under the chosen screen names. He says he was told by his content-management software experts that such a configuration is impossible. "Based on that, I am trying to do what is most equitable to all of our readers," says McCumber. "When a relatively small city is at the center of your market, just about everybody commented about is known, and the anonymous comments sting."

HughPickens.com writes: Henry Farrel writes in the Washington Post that there's a group of people who appear to be somewhat prone to violent extremism: Engineers. They are nine times more likely to be terrorists than you would expect by chance. In a forthcoming book, Engineers of Jihad, published by Princeton University Press, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog provide a new theory explaining why engineers seem unusually prone to become involved in terrorist organizations. They say it's caused by the way engineers think about the world. Survey data indicates engineering faculty at universities are far more likely to be conservative than people with other degrees, and far more likely to be religious. They are seven times as likely to be both religious and conservative as social scientists. Gambetta and Hertog speculate that engineers combine these political predilections with a marked preference towards finding clearcut answers.

Gambetta and Hertog suggest that this mindset combines with frustrated expectations in many Middle Eastern and North African countries (PDF), and among many migrant populations, where people with engineering backgrounds have difficulty in realizing their ambitions for good and socially valued jobs. This explains why there are relatively few radical Islamists with engineering backgrounds in Saudi Arabia (where they can easily find good employment) and why engineers were more prone to become left-wing radicals in Turkey and Iran.

Some people might argue that terrorist groups want to recruit engineers because engineers have valuable technical skills that might be helpful, such as in making bombs. This seems plausible – but it doesn't seem to be true. Terrorist organizations don't seem to recruit people because of their technical skills, but because they seem trustworthy and they don't actually need many people with engineering skills. "Bomb-making and the technical stuff that is done in most groups is performed by very few people (PDF), so you don't need, if you have a large group, 40 or 50 percent engineers," says Hertog. "You just need a few guys to put together the bombs. So the scale of the overrepresentation, especially in the larger groups is not easily explained."

JoeyRox writes: Yahoo is running an A/B test that blocks access to Yahoo email if the site detects that the user is running an Ad Blocker. Yahoo says that this a trial rather than a new policy, effecting only a "small number" of users. Those lucky users are greeted with a message that reads "Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail." Regarding the legality of the move, "Yahoo is well within its rights to do so," said Ansel Halliburton an attorney at Kronenberger Rosenfeld who specializes in Internet law.

HughPickens.com writes: Philip Bump reports at the Washington Post that Donald Trump confirmed to NBC on Thursday evening that he supports a database to track Muslims in the United States. The database of Muslims arose after an interview Yahoo News's Hunter Walker conducted with Trump earlier this week, during which he asked the Republican front-runner to weigh in on the current debate over refugees from Syria. "We're going to have to do things that we never did before," Trump told Walker. "Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule." When pressed on whether these measures might include tracking Muslim Americans in a database or noting their religious affiliations on identification cards, Trump would not go into detail — but did not reject the options. Trump's reply? "We're going to have to — we're going to have to look at a lot of things very closely," he said. "We're going to have to look at the mosques. We're going to have to look very, very carefully." After an event on in Newton, Iowa, on Thursday night, NBC's Vaughn Hillyard pressed the point. "Should there be a database system that tracks Muslims here in this country?," Hillyard asked. "There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases" Trump said. "We should have a lot of systems." Hillyard asked about implementation, including the process of adding people to the system. "Good management procedures," Trump said. Sign people up at mosques, Hillyard asked? "Different places," Trump replied. "You sign them up at different places. But it's all about management."

HughPickens.com writes: Philip Bump reports at the Washington Post that Donald Trump confirmed to NBC on Thursday evening that he supports a database to track Muslims in the United States. The database of Muslims arose after an interview Yahoo News's Hunter Walker conducted with Trump earlier this week, during which he asked the Republican front-runner to weigh in on the current debate over refugees from Syria. "We're going to have to do things that we never did before," Trump told Walker. "Some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule." When pressed on whether these measures might include tracking Muslim Americans in a database or noting their religious affiliations on identification cards, Trump would not go into detail — but did not reject the options. Trump's reply? "We're going to have to — we're going to have to look at a lot of things very closely," he said. "We're going to have to look at the mosques. We're going to have to look very, very carefully." After an event on in Newton, Iowa, on Thursday night, NBC's Vaughn Hillyard pressed the point. "Should there be a database system that tracks Muslims here in this country?," Hillyard asked. "There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases" Trump said. "We should have a lot of systems." Hillyard asked about implementation, including the process of adding people to the system. "Good management procedures," Trump said. Sign people up at mosques, Hillyard asked? "Different places," Trump replied. "You sign them up at different places. But it's all about management."

Earthquake Retrofit writes: In an FCC oversight hearing, U.S. Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) asked Chairman Tom Wheeler if it's possible to shut down websites used by ISIS and other terrorist groups. He said, "Isn't there something we can do under existing law to shut those Internet sites down, and I know they pop up like weeds, but once they do pop up, shut them down and then turn those Internet addresses over to the appropriate law enforcement agencies to try to track them down? I would think that even in an open society, when there is a clear threat, they've declared war against us, our way of life, they've threatened to attack this very city our capital is in, that we could do something about the Internet and social media side of the equation." Wheeler pointed out that the legal definition of "lawful intercept" did not support such actions, but added that Congress could expand the law to validate the concept. Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee is exploring the idea of using the recent terror attacks in France as ammunition to force tech companies away from end-to-end encryption. "Lawmakers said it was time to intensify discussions over what technology companies such as Apple and Google could do to help unscramble key information on devices such as iPhones and apps like WhatsApp, where suspected terrorists have communicated."

An anonymous reader writes: As usual, Anonymous members are quicker to respond to threats than investigators and have announced #OpParis as revenge for the Paris attacks. Their action is similar to #OpISIS from this spring, launched after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Previously Anonymous ousted thousands of ISIS Twitter accounts in #OpISIS. In a more conventional response, the government of France has been bombarding ISIS positions in Syria with airstrikes, and hunting for suspect Salah Abdeslam in connection with Friday's killings.

Nigel Dessau has written a book titled Become a 21st Century Executive: Breaking Away from the Pack. One thing he mentions both in his book and in conversation is that you should harness conflict in the workplace rather than try to stop it. And the first name that came to mind was Linus Torvalds, and how kernel developer Sarah Sharp recently quit the kernel development team loudly and publicly because of Linus's 'Brutal' Communications Style. And now the Washington Post has put out an article under the headline, Net of Insecurity: The Kernel of the Argument, which is about Linus's management style and his recent conflicts with almost every Internet security maven within reach of his online writing. Meanwhile, at ZDNet, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols calls the Post article "re-bundled old FUD about Linux and the internet's security."

Nigel likes Linus (as do most people who've met him in person) and points out that Linus can get away with being somewhat prickly because he's a genius. The same could be said about the late Steve Jobs and a number of other interesting leaders in the computer business. And Nigel's book and this interview also talk about something that may be more important in the long run than this year's small spate of Linux publicity, namely mentoring and how it can help millennials become productive workers in knowledge fields -- which a whole bunch of them need to start doing PDQ because all the baby boomers everybody loves to hate are either retired already or will be retired before long.

HughPickens.com writes: Caitlin Dewey writes at the Washington Post that Rumblr, a "Tinder for fighting," promises to bring fight club straight to your smartphone that lets users schedule consensual, recreational fights with local strangers for free. "Rumblr is an app for recreational fighters to find, meet and fight other brawl enthusiasts nearby," according the app's website. It encourages users to insult their matched opponents with this pro-tip: "tell your match what you don't like about their picture." Reported by the likes of Venture Beat, Business Insider, New York magazine, and the New York Daily News, there's only one problem: There's no way that the app is real. In fact, it looks far more likely that we are being trolled by a couple of precocious teenagers. Let's start with the app's most obvious problem: its questionable legality. If you're "throwing down" and seriously injure your opponent — or, God forbid, he dies — you cannot claim self-defense and you could be charged with crimes ranging from misdemeanor assault to homicide. If Rumblr's creators are found to have encouraged or aided an assault, they could be guilty of criminal facilitation in the fourth degree — a class A misdemeanor. They could certainly be sued in civil court by injured users or their families. "Our bet? Rumblr is a marketing stunt, a prank or (best case!) an unsubtle parody," concludes Dewy. "Part of me is scared it will turn out to be real, of course. Not for my sake, but for humanity's."

Bruce66423 writes: A government project to digitize immigration forms succeeded in enabling exactly one application to be completed and submitted after 10 years of work because of the botched software and implementation. The Washington Post reports: "This project, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, was originally supposed to cost a half-billion dollars and be finished in 2013. Instead, it’s now projected to reach up to $3.1 billion and be done nearly four years from now, putting in jeopardy efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration policies, handle immigrants already seeking citizenship and detect national security threats, according to documents and interviews with former and current federal officials."

An anonymous reader writes: The FCC announced that it will not prevent Facebook, Google, and other websites from not honoring users' Do Not Track requests that make it difficult for them to track online activities. The Washington Post reports: "The announcement is a blow to privacy advocates who had petitioned the agency for stronger Internet privacy rules. But it's a win for many Silicon Valley companies whose business models rely on monetizing Internet users' personal data. It's also the latest move in an ongoing battle to defend the agency's new net neutrality rules, which opponents warned would result in the regulation of popular Web sites and online services. By rejecting the petition, the FCC likely hopes to defuse that argument. The rules, which took effect this summer, allow the FCC to regulate only providers of Internet access, not individual Web sites, said a senior agency official."

theodp writes: Mattel came under fire last November over its portrayal of Computer Engineer Barbie as incompetent. But the toymaker is now drawing kudos for its new Imagine the Possibilities Barbie ad campaign (video), which shows little girls pretending to be professionals in real-life settings, including a college professor lecturing students about the brain. Ad Age, however, is cynical of the empowering spin on Barbie, which it says "comes across as a manipulative way to silence criticism." Interestingly, some of that criticism may have come from the White House.

WH Visitor Records show that Barbie's brainy makeover came after Mattel execs — Evelyn Mazzocco, Julia Pistor, Heather Lazarus — were summoned to the White House last April to meet with the White House Council on Women and Girls. A little Googling suggests other attendees at the sit-down included representatives of the nation's leading toy makers (Disney Consumer, Nickelodeon, Hasbro, American Girl), media giants (Disney Channels, Viacom, TIME, Scholastic, Univision, Participant Media, Cartoon Network, Netflix), retailers (Walmart, Target), educators, scientists, the U.S. Dept. of Education (including the Deputy Director of Michelle Obama's Reach Higher Initiative), philanthropists (Rockefeller, Harnisch Foundations) — and Google. Representing Google was CS Education in Media Program Manager Julie Ann Crommett, who has worked with Disney to shape programming to inspire girls to pursue CS in conjunction with the search giant's $50 million Made With Code initiative.

The April White House meeting appears to be a reschedule of a planned March meeting that was to have included other Mattel execs, including Stephanie Cota, Venetia Davie, and Lori Pantel, to whom the task of apologizing for Computer Engineer Barbie fell last November. For the first time in over a decade, Barbie was no longer the most popular girls' toy last holiday season, having lost her crown to Disney Princesses Elsa and Anna, who coincidentally teamed up with Google-backed Code.org last December to "teach President Obama to code" at a widely-publicized White House event.

An anonymous reader writes: The Keystone XL pipeline controversy is finally coming to a close. On Friday, President Obama denied a construction permit for the pipeline, ending a seven-year political fight. Obama said, "America's now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change. And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership. And that's the biggest risk we face — not acting." Secretary of State John Kerry added, "The reality is that this decision could not be made solely on the numbers — jobs that would be created, dirty fuel that would be transported here, or carbon pollution that would ultimately be unleashed. The United States cannot ask other nations to make tough choices to address climate change if we are unwilling to make them ourselves." The decision comes as no surprise to the oil industry, and they've been busily working on other ways to transport the oil. "U.S. imports of oil from Canada hit a record high of 3.4 million barrels a day in August, up from just under 2 million barrels a day in 2008, the year the pipeline was proposed."

Rick Zeman writes: The Washington Post has a lengthy article on Linus Torvalds and his thoughts on Linux security. Quoting: "...while Linux is fast, flexible and free, a growing chorus of critics warn that it has security weaknesses that could be fixed but haven't been. Worse, as Internet security has surged as a subject of international concern, Torvalds has engaged in an occasionally profane standoff with experts on the subject. ...

His broader message was this: Security of any system can never be perfect. So it always must be weighed against other priorities — such as speed, flexibility and ease of use — in a series of inherently nuanced trade-offs. This is a process, Torvalds suggested, poorly understood by his critics. 'The people who care most about this stuff are completely crazy. They are very black and white,' he said ... 'Security in itself is useless. The upside is always somewhere else. The security is never the thing that you really care about.'"

Of course, contradictory points of view are presented, too: "While I don't think that the Linux kernel has a terrible track record, it's certainly much worse than a lot of people would like it to be," said Matthew Garrett, principal security engineer for CoreOS, a San Francisco company that produces an operating system based on Linux. At a time when research into protecting software has grown increasingly sophisticated, Garrett said, "very little of that research has been incorporated into Linux."

An anonymous reader writes with a report from CNN that U.S. and UK intelligence agencies believe it is more likely than not that the destruction on October 31st of a Russian A321 jetliner in Sinai "was most likely caused by a bomb on the plane planted by ISIS or an affiliate of the group." Kogalymavia Flight 9268 fell apart in flight, killing all aboard. From CNN's article: The British government announced Wednesday that it had "become concerned that the plane may well have been brought down by an explosive device." A formal conclusion has not been reached by the intelligence communities of either country. An UK aviation team is travelling to inspect the Sharm airport to look at whether there were proper security measures at the airport and the various scenarios by which an explosive device could have made it to the Russian airliner "including a person or in cargo," according to the British transport minister. Both Russian and Egyptian officials discount the claim, but detecting bombs is hard.

An anonymous reader writes: Harvard law professor Larry Lessig is ending his run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Lessig blames the demise of his campaign on party rules that have left him "shut out" of the Democratic debates. "The party won't let me be a candidate," Lessig said in his final campaign video. "I can't ask people to support a campaign that I know can't get before the members of the Democratic Party."

schwit1 writes with this opinion piece from Eugene Volokh, who teaches free speech law at UCLA School of Law, about the push to ban "offensive" speech and censor websites on campus. He writes: "A large coalition of advocacy groups has asked the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights to pressure colleges to (1) punish students for their speech and (2) block student access to certain Web sites — especially sites such as Yik Yak, which allow students to anonymously post their views..... Yet another example of today's Anti-Free Speech Movement for American universities — unfortunately, one that fits well into the Education Department's attitudes. Fortunately, courts have firmly rejected these kinds of calls to restrict college student speech, though the OCR and the college administrations it pressures can get away with a lot of restrictions until the lawsuits are actually brought."

retroworks writes: The B-52s currently in use have been flown by three generations of American Air Force pilots. B1s and B-2 Bombers are also long in the tooth. The Pentagon has been looking for a new model to replace them, and Northrop Grumman has won for the next half-century with a major new order for state-of-the-art bomber aircraft. The bomber will be capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and the contract is worth almost $60 billion. The Atlantic reports, "While the current fleet remains useful, the Air Force wants a bomber that can evade the advancing air defenses of Russia and China—if ever the need arises. The long-range bomber would act as a deterrent against actions designed to keep U.S. forces out of a designated area—what the military calls 'anti-access aerial denial.'"

HughPickens.com writes: Back before methamphetamine cooks started buying up non-prescription decongestants to brew crank, all of us were able to buy effective decongestants right off the store shelf without a problem. Now David DiSalvo writes at Forbes that to fill the store-shelf void, drug companies substituted the already-FDA approved ingredient phenylephrine for pseudoephedrine. But the oral decongestant phenylephrine simply doesn't work at the FDA-approved amount found in popular non-prescription brands, and it may not even work at much higher doses. Researchers at the University of Florida are asking the FDA to remove oral phenylephrine from the market. "We think the evidence supports that phenylephrine's status as a safe and effective over-the-counter product should be changed," says Randy Hatton. "We are looking out for the consumer, and he or she needs to know that science says that oral phenylephrine does not work for the majority of people."

In 1976, the FDA deemed a 10 milligram oral dose of phenylephrine safe and effective at relieving congestion, making it possible for companies to use the ingredient without conducting studies. But Leslie Hendeles and Hatton say phenylephrine does not effectively relieve nasal stuffiness at this dose. They say the FDA cited four tests demonstrating efficacy at the 10 milligram dose, two of which were unpublished and sponsored by drug manufacturers. In contrast, the FDA cited six tests demonstrating no significant difference between phenylephrine and placebo. Hendeles said a higher dose may work, but no research has been published regarding safety at higher doses. "They need to do a dose-response study to determine at what higher dose they get both efficacy and safety," says Hendeles adding that until then "consumers should go that extra step and get it (pseudoephedrine) from behind the counter."

An anonymous reader writes: A new study examined the amount of time U.S. public schools spend on government-mandated standardized tests, and found that the requirements are detrimental to both students and teachers. On average, students will take 112 standardized tests during their K-12 education. From grades 3-11, students spend over 20 hours per year on standardized tests alone. "It portrays a chock-a-block jumble, where tests have been layered upon tests under mandates from Congress, the U.S. Department of Education and state and local governments, many of which the study argues have questionable value to teachers and students. Testing companies that aggressively market new exams also share the blame, the study said."

The U.S. Department of Education has issued an action plan to school districts outlining ways to reduce useless tests and eliminate redundant ones. President Obama even posted a video pledging to reduce the test load of American students. "Standardized testing has caused intense debate on Capitol Hill as lawmakers work to craft a replacement for No Child Left Behind. Testing critics tried unsuccessfully to erase the federal requirement that schools test in math and reading. Civil rights advocates pushed back, arguing that tests are an important safeguard for struggling students because publicly reported test scores illuminate the achievement gap between historically underserved students and their more affluent peers."

theodp writes: The curious case of Ahmed Mohamed, the 9th grader who was cuffed for scaring school officials with what turned out to be a repackaged digital clock, has taken yet another twist with news on Tuesday that the 'Clock Kid' and his family will move to Qatar. Less than 24 hours after Ahmed met President Obama at the White House, the family issued a news release saying, "After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization's on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity." Prior to the announcement, some in the press sensed something was amiss when the President seemed to give Ahmed the cold shoulder on Monday after personally inviting Ahmed to the White House for "Astronomy Night." Last month, Ahmed enjoyed a decidedly warmer welcome at Google, where he was literally put front and center before the Google Science Fair winners (including Grand Prize winner Olivia Hallisey, who came up with a novel way to detect Ebola), and enjoyed a meet-and-greet with Sergey Brin.

NASA astronaut -- and Commander of the International Space Station -- Scott Kelly on Friday broke the record for time in space -- for U.S. astronauts, at least; the overall longest flight of 437.7 days belongs to Valeri Polyakov, and the Washington Post points out that Russia’s Gennady Padalka has spent a total of 879 days aloft. Kelly brings a unique asset to the long-term study of health for spacefarers, because his twin brother Mark, here on Earth, serves as close to a perfect control subject as NASA could hope to have. Kelly is a prolific tweeter about the progress of his year-long mission aboard the ISS; on the occasion of beating the time-aloft record, his modest acknowledgement read only, "Records are meant to be broken. Look fwd to one of my colleagues surpassing my end 500+ days on our #JourneyToMars!"

The Washington Post reports that long-time NASA engineer and administrator George Mueller died on October 12 of congestive heart failure, at 97. Mueller had a hand in NASA programs as Associate Administrator of the NASA Office of Manned Space Flight going back to the Apollo program, but not only as an administrator: he played a large role in the design of Skylab, and in lobbying for the Space Shuttle; this last earned him the (sometimes disputed) nickname of "Father of the Space Shuttle." During his Apollo days, Mueller became well known for his insistence on "all-up" testing, rather than incremental, per-component tests. From the Washington Post's story: As applied to the space program, [all-up testing] implied specifically such techniques as the testing of all three stages of the giant Saturn V booster rocket while they were coupled together and with a payload attached to boot. It was reported that the scheme had its doubters, among them such leading lights of rocketry as Wernher von Braun. But in time, the forceful Dr. Mueller proved persuasive enough to overcome all such reservations, and it was “all up” for the mammoth Saturn V, the launch vehicle upon which NASA pinned its hopes of sending Americans to the moon.

schwit1 writes: On Monday, the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments in United States v. Nosal on an interesting legal question: If a person shares access to a computer account with somebody else, under what circumstances can the second person engage in unauthorized access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? The case centers around the difference between having access to something and having permission to use it. In other words, if you give somebody a desktop password to your computer so they can watch Netflix, but they take advantage of that to read your email, how does the law look at it? What happens if they come back later and log in again without your explicit permission, but only watch Netflix? What happens if you give them your Netflix password to watch while at your house, but they go home and use it to watch Netflix at their house? Eugene Volokh has a forthcoming paper articulating the legal interpretations of computer trespass. It's a tricky set of rules, and one another court has already misapplied.

schwit1 writes: On Monday, the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments in United States v. Nosal on an interesting legal question: If a person shares access to a computer account with somebody else, under what circumstances can the second person engage in unauthorized access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? The case centers around the difference between having access to something and having permission to use it. In other words, if you give somebody a desktop password to your computer so they can watch Netflix, but they take advantage of that to read your email, how does the law look at it? What happens if they come back later and log in again without your explicit permission, but only watch Netflix? What happens if you give them your Netflix password to watch while at your house, but they go home and use it to watch Netflix at their house? Eugene Volokh has a forthcoming paper articulating the legal interpretations of computer trespass. It's a tricky set of rules, and one another court has already misapplied.

HughPickens.com writes: Ana Swanson writes in the Washington Post that when people talk about "disruptive technologies," they're usually thinking of the latest thing out of Silicon Valley but some of the most historically disruptive technologies aren't exactly what you would expect and arguably, the most disruptive technologiy of the last century is the refrigerator. In the 1920s, only about a third of households reported having a washer or a vacuum, and refrigerators were even rarer. But just 20 years later, refrigerator ownership was common, with more than two-thirds of Americans owning an icebox. According to Helen Veit, the surge in refrigerator ownership totally changed the way that Americans cooked. "Before reliable refrigeration, cooking and food preservation were barely distinguishable tasks" and techniques like pickling, smoking and canning were common in nearly every American kitchen. With the arrival of the icebox and then the electric refrigerator, foods could now be kept and consumed in the same form for days. Americans no longer had to make and consume great quantities of cheese, whiskey and hard cider — some of the only ways to keep foods edible through the winter. "A whole arsenal of home preservation techniques, from cheese-making to meat-smoking to egg-pickling to ketchup-making, receded from daily use within a single generation," writes Veit.

Technologies like the smartphone, the computer and the Internet have, of course, dramatically changed the ways we live and work but consider the spread of electricity, running water, the flush toilet developed and popularized by Thomas Crapper and central heating and the changes these have wrought. "These technologies were so disruptive because they massively reduced the time spent on housework," concludes Swanson. "The number of hours that people spent per week preparing meals, doing laundry and cleaning fell from 58 in 1900 to only 18 hours in 1970, and it has declined further since then."

New submitter fremsley471 writes with this story by Christopher Ingraham about shooting accidents involving children 3 and under in The United States. There were at least 43 cases this year of shootings involving a toddler. The Washington Post reports: "This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: a little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself or someone else. These cases rarely bubble up to the national level except when someone, like a parent, ends up dead. But cases like this happen a lot more frequently than you might think. Briefly sifting through news reports found at least 43 instances this year of somebody being shot by a toddler 3 or younger. In 31 of those 43 cases, a toddler found a gun and shot himself or herself."

PolygamousRanchKid sends this report from the Washington Post: A federal court said Tuesday that a civil rights lawsuit accusing police in New York City of improperly singling out Muslims for surveillance could proceed, reversing a lower court's decision last year to dismiss the case. In its opinion (PDF), a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit rejected the city's call to have the case dismissed and brushed aside any suggestion that media reports about the surveillance, rather than the surveillance itself, caused any harm.

The lawsuit claims that surveillance of Muslim people in New Jersey discriminated against them due to their religion. It was filed by Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and later joined by the Center for Constitutional Rights, another legal organization, on behalf of several New Jersey Muslims who say they were unconstitutionally monitored by the New York Police Department. ... Last year, the NYPD disbanded the unit involved in the surveillance activities, a move that Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) praised in a statement at the time as "a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve."

schwit1 writes: Lessig has raised a million dollars, which is nothing to sneeze at, but he's being given the cold shoulder by the Democrats when it comes to participating in the debates. I think he's got a good argument for being included — he's certainly as serious a candidate as some of the others, and I'm hearing a lot about his campaign.

Why are they keeping Lessig out? According to Lessig, it's for the same reason he wants in: "My view is that if we can get this message [of reform] into the debate it would change the dynamics of this Democratic primary entirely. This issue framed in this way totally blows up the Democratic primary."

Hillary and Bernie, he says, are promising the moon to voters, but can't deliver. Lessig told me, "If I can get on that stage and say the rocket can't get off the ground, and we have to change this dynamic first," the narrative shifts in a way that the leading candidates can't address.

Nicola Hahn writes: The pluralist stance of American politics contends that true power in the United States has been constitutionally vested in "the people" through mechanisms like the electoral process, freedom of speech, and the ability to establish political parties. The traditional view is that these aspects of our political system result in a broad distribution of power that prevents any one faction from gaining an inordinate amount of influence. And today the New York Times has revealed the shortcomings of this narrative by publishing the names of the 158 wealthy families that have donated almost half of the money spent towards the 2016 presidential race. This group of donors is primarily Republican and is dominated by interests in the banking industry. These facts lend credence to the idea that national policy making is influenced heavily by a relatively small group of people. That the American body politic is largely controlled by a deep state.

HughPickens.com writes: Jeff Guo reports at the Washington Post that development of qinghaosu — or artemisinin — is one of modern China's proudest accomplishments winning a Noble Prize in Medicine this year for Tu Youyou, but it's also a story about Communism, Chairman Mao, and China's return to the world economy. On May 23, 1967, Chinese scientists commenced Project 523, a secret effort that enlisted hundreds of researchers to discover a new malaria drug during the Vietnam War. Although in a better warfare position, the People's Army of Vietnam (North Vietnamese Army) and its allies in the South, Viet Cong, suffered increasing mortality because of malaria epidemics. The project began at the height of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, a brutal time during which academics and intellectuals were murdered, imprisoned, or sent to "reeducation camps" in mass purges.

For doctors and chemists. Project 523 was a lifeline, according to Professor Zhou Yiqing. "By the time Project 523 had got under way, the Cultural Revolution had started and the research provided shelter for scientists facing political persecution." Tu's husband had been banished to the countryside when she was asked to get involved in Project 523. Tu's research project sought to find modern logic in ancient ways, much as the French researchers identified quinine from the bark of the cinchona tree. According to Tu, she and her team screened over 2,000 different Chinese herbs described in old texts, of which about 200 were good enough to test in mice. That's when they hit upon a plant called Artemisia annua: annual wormwood, or qinghao in Chinese. At the time, all of this work remained a Chinese military secret; some of the results were published in Chinese-language journals, but it would be well after the death of Mao Zedong until China would reveal that it had discovered a surprisingly potent new weapon against malaria.

According to Guo the lion's share of the credit rightly goes to Tu and the countless other Chinese scientists who worked on Project 523. But Oxford anthropologist Elisabeth Hsu suggests that the political climate at the time also deserves recognition. Qinghaosu might never have been discovered had it not been for Maoist China's nationalist infatuation with Chinese folk medicine. "It was thus a feature specific to institutions of the People's Republic of China that scientists, who themselves had learnt ways of appreciating traditional knowledge, worked side by side with historians of traditional medicine, who had textual learning," Hsu argues. "This was crucial for the 'discovery' of qinghao."

An anonymous reader writes: For the first time, the Chinese government has arrested a group of hackers at the request of the United States. The hackers are suspected of having "stolen commercial secrets" from companies in the U.S., which were then passed on to Chinese competitors. "The arrests come amid signs of a potential change in the power balance between the U.S. and Chinese governments on commercial cyberespionage, one of the most fraught issues between the two countries. For years, U.S. firms and officials have said Beijing hasn't done enough to crack down on digital larceny." It's a big first step in establishing a functional cybersecurity relationship between the two nations. Now, everyone will be watching to see if China follows up the arrests with prosecution. "A public trial is important not only because that would be consistent with established principles of criminal justice, but because it could discourage other would-be hackers and show that the arrests were not an empty gesture."

Mark Wilson writes: The Obama administration has announced it will not require companies to decrypt encrypted messages for law enforcement agencies. This is being hailed as a "partial victory" by the Electronic Frontier Foundation; partial because, as reported by the Washington Post, the government "will not — for now — call for [such] legislation." This means companies will not be forced to build backdoors into their products, but there is no guarantee it won't happen further down the line. The government wants to continue talks with the technology industry to find a solution, but leaving things in limbo for the time being will create a sense of unease on both sides of the debate. The EFF has also compiled a report showing where the major tech companies stand on encryption.

theodp writes: On Thursday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called on the federal government to make computer coding classes a requirement of high-school graduation (video). Back in December 2013, Emanuel — who previously served as President Obama's chief of staff — joined then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett to announce a comprehensive K-12 computer science program for CPS students, including a partnership with then-nascent Code.org. "[Y]ou need this skill Make it a high-school graduation requirement," Emanuel said. "They need to know this stuff. In the way that I can get by kind of being OK by it, they can't.

HughPickens.com writes: Lauren Gambino reports at The Guardian that months after winning this year's national debate championship, Harvard's debate team has fallen to a debate team of three inmates with violent criminal records. The showdown took place at the Eastern correctional facility in New York, a maximum-security prison where convicts can take courses taught by faculty from nearby Bard College, and where inmates have formed a popular debate club. The Bard prison initiative has expanded since 2001 to six New York correctional facilities, and aims to provide inmates with a liberal arts education so that when the students leave prison they are able to find meaningful work. A three-judge panel concluded that the Bard team had raised strong arguments that the Harvard team had failed to consider and declared the team of inmates victorious. "Debate helps students master arguments that they don't necessarily agree with," says Max Kenner. "It also pushes people to learn to be not just better litigators but to become more empathetic people, and that's what really speaks to us as an institution about the debate union."

The prison team has proven formidable in the past, beating teams from the US military academy at West Point and the University of Vermont. They lost a rematch against West Point in April, setting up a friendly rivalry between the teams. The competition against West Point has become an annual event, and the prison team is preparing for the next debate in spring. In the morning before the debate, team members talked of nerves and their hope that competing against Harvard—even if they lost—would inspire other inmates to pursue educations. "If we win, it's going to make a lot of people question what goes on in here," says Alex Hall, a 31-year-old from Manhattan convicted of manslaughter. "We might not be as naturally rhetorically gifted, but we work really hard."

The Australian reports that a trio of scientists (hailing from from Japan, China, and Ireland) has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work in treating parasitic diseases. Irish scientist William Campbell (currently research fellow emeritus at New Jersey's Drew University), and Japanese biochemist Satoshi Omura, were awarded half of the monetary award for their work in defeating roundworm infections; the drug they developed as a result, Avermectin, has helped drastically lower two devastating diseases -- river blindness and lymphatic filariasis -- and has shown promise in treating other ailments as well. The other half of the prize has been awarded to Chinese researcher Youyou Tu, who discovered a novel antimalarial drug based on her research into traditional herbal medicines. (Also at The Washington Post, CNN, The New York Times, and elsewhere. The awards were live-blogged by The Guardian.)

theodp writes: Before President Obama announced John B. King as his pick to replace outgoing U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan (who is returning to Chicago, where his kids now attend a $30K-a-year private school), King was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pick to lead Zuck's failed $100 million "reform" effort of Newark's Schools. From The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?: "[Newark Mayor Cory] Booker asked [NJ Governor Chris] Christie to grant him control of the schools by fiat, but the governor demurred, offering him instead a role as unofficial partner in all decisions and policies, beginning with their joint selection of a 'superstar' superintendent to lead the charge. Booker's first choice was John King, then deputy New York State education commissioner, who had led some of the top-performing charter schools in New York City and Boston and who credited public school teachers with inspiring him to persevere after he was orphaned as a young boy in Brooklyn. [Mark] Zuckerberg and [his wife Priscilla] Chan flew King to Palo Alto for a weekend with them and [Facebook executive Sheryl] Sandberg; Christie hosted him at the governor's beach retreat on the Jersey Shore; and Booker led King and his wife, Melissa, on a tour of Newark, with stops at parks and businesses that hadn't existed before his mayoralty. But after much thought, King turned them down. Zuckerberg, Christie, and Booker expected to arrive at their national model within five years. King believed it could take almost that long to change the system's fundamental procedures and to raise expectations across the city for children and schools. "John's view was that no one has achieved what they're trying to achieve: build an urban school district serving high-poverty kids that gets uniformly strong outcomes," said an acquaintance who talked with King about the offer. "You'd have to invest not only a long period of time but tremendous political capital to get it done." King had questions about a five-year plan overseen by politicians who were likely to seek higher office."

theodp writes: Before President Obama announced John B. King as his pick to replace outgoing U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan (who is returning to Chicago, where his kids now attend a $30K-a-year private school), King was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pick to lead Zuck's failed $100 million "reform" effort of Newark's Schools. From The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?: "[Newark Mayor Cory] Booker asked [NJ Governor Chris] Christie to grant him control of the schools by fiat, but the governor demurred, offering him instead a role as unofficial partner in all decisions and policies, beginning with their joint selection of a 'superstar' superintendent to lead the charge. Booker's first choice was John King, then deputy New York State education commissioner, who had led some of the top-performing charter schools in New York City and Boston and who credited public school teachers with inspiring him to persevere after he was orphaned as a young boy in Brooklyn. [Mark] Zuckerberg and [his wife Priscilla] Chan flew King to Palo Alto for a weekend with them and [Facebook executive Sheryl] Sandberg; Christie hosted him at the governor's beach retreat on the Jersey Shore; and Booker led King and his wife, Melissa, on a tour of Newark, with stops at parks and businesses that hadn't existed before his mayoralty. But after much thought, King turned them down. Zuckerberg, Christie, and Booker expected to arrive at their national model within five years. King believed it could take almost that long to change the system's fundamental procedures and to raise expectations across the city for children and schools. "John's view was that no one has achieved what they're trying to achieve: build an urban school district serving high-poverty kids that gets uniformly strong outcomes," said an acquaintance who talked with King about the offer. "You'd have to invest not only a long period of time but tremendous political capital to get it done." King had questions about a five-year plan overseen by politicians who were likely to seek higher office."