Slashdot Mirror

mdsolar writes with news that city officials in Woodland, North Carolina have taken issue with being ridiculed by the internet and want to set the record straight. According to the article: "Usually what happens in Woodland stays in Woodland, a town 115 miles east of Raleigh with one Dollar General store and one restaurant. But news of the Northampton County hamlet's moratorium on solar farms blew up on social media over the weekend after a local paper quoted a resident complaining to the Town Council that solar farms would take away sunshine from nearby vegetation. Another resident warned that solar panels would suck up energy from the sun. As outlandish as those claims seem, town officials say the Internet got it wrong."

MarkWhittington writes: An argument about class warfare has broken out over the notion of a commercial Mars colony. It started when Elon Musk, who is said to be planning to retire on the Red Planet, mused that World War III could ruin his plans to settle Mars by destroying the Earth or at least damaging civilization sufficiently that space exploration has to be put off indefinitely, Newsweek, taking up the theme of another sort of planetary disaster, accused Musk and other space-minded billionaires of plotting to abandon the planet to the ravages of global warming while they go to Mars to live the good life.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 43 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Notable additions to the browser include a 64-bit version for Windows (finally!), a new strict blocklist for the browser's tracking protection feature, and tab audio indicators on Android. "There is, however, a bit of a caveat. Firefox 64-bit for Windows has limited support for plugins. Certain sites that require plugins and work in Firefox 32-bit might not work in this 64-bit version. But Mozilla doesn’t see this as a big problem, and says it is by design. After all, the company plans to drop support for NPAPI plugins in Firefox by the end of the year (though it will keep Flash around). Mozilla has just over two weeks to deliver on that promise." Here are the changelogs: desktop and Android.

MojoKid writes: AMD announced today that the company is releasing a slew of open-source software and tools to give game developers, heterogeneous applications, and HPC applications deeper access to the GPU and GPU resources. AMD and their Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) are looking for ways to ease game development, so developers can more easily re-use code and port their games from consoles over to the PC. With GPUOpen, game developers will have direct access to GPU hardware, as well as access to a large collection of open source effects, tools, libraries and SDKs, which are being made available on GitHub under an MIT open-source license. As part of the effort, the company is also releasing a new HCC C++ compiler which will be a tool in enabling developers to more easily leverage the resources of discrete GPU hardware in heterogeneous systems. The HCC complier also allows developers to convert CUDA code to portable C++. According to AMD, internal testing shows that in many cases 90 percent or more of CUDA code can be automatically converted into C++ with the final 10 percent converted manually in the widely popular C++ language. An early access program for the "Boltzmann Initiative" tools is planned for Q1 2016.

mdsolar writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: The citizens of Woodland, N.C. have spoken loud and clear: They don't want none of them highfalutin solar panels in their good town. They scare off the kids. "All the young people are going to move out," warned Bobby Mann, a local resident concerned about the future of his burg. Worse, Mann said, the solar panels would suck up all the energy from the Sun. Another resident -- a retired science teacher, no less -- expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would block photosynthesis, and prevent nearby plants from growing. Jane Mann then went on to add that there seemed to have been a lot of cancer deaths in the area, and that no one could tell her solar panels didn't cause cancer. "I want information," Mann said. "Enough is enough."

Fast Company takes a brief look at the Aerodrome, a facility open (though not yet complete) in Boulder City, Nevada, which bills itself as the world's first droneport. From the article: There are other planned droneport projects around the world, most notably one in Rwanda meant to be the launching pad for drones to make deliveries of medical supplies. But that project hasn't yet broken ground, according to Aerodrome officials, while parts of the Boulder City project are already operational and the full facility is under construction and expected to be completed by 2018. The facility is one of six Federal Aviation Administration-approved drone test sites in the United States, Aerodrome officials say. ... The droneport is a private project, but open to the public, and offers flight training, drone repair, pilot certification and testing, and other UAS research, development, and educational services. The facility is meant to be used by any aircraft that weighs less than 1,320 pounds.

HughPickens.com writes: Lisa Jenning reports at Restaurant News that Chipotle plans to do DNA-based tests of all fresh produce before it is shipped to restaurants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the E. coli outbreak linked to Chipotle now includes seven more people in three new states, including Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania, for a total count of 52 sickened in nine states. Most of the illnesses were in Washington, with 27 cases, and Oregon, with 13 cases. Twenty people have been hospitalized but there have been no reported deaths. Health officials say a meal or ingredient from Chipotle was likely the cause, but they have not yet identified the specific source of the outbreak. Chipotle's founder and co-chief executive, Steve Ells apologized to patrons who fell ill after eating at the company's restaurants. "This was a very unfortunate incident and I'm deeply sorry that this happened, but the procedures we're putting in place today are so above industry norms that we are going to be the safest place to eat." The chain will begin end-of-shelf-life testing to ensure quality specifications are met throughout the shelf life of products. The data collected will be used to measure the performance of vendors and suppliers to enhance food safety throughout the system.

But food safety experts are mixed about the effectiveness of such screening efforts for the prevention of foodborne illness. Bob Whitaker, chief science and technology officer for the Produce Marketing Association, says such tests are not practical as a screening tool. Instead, restaurant chains should focus on whether their suppliers have adequate food-safety programs in place. "You can't test your way to safety," says Whitaker. "The problem with product testing by itself is that it's hard to take enough samples to be confident that the product is free of any pathogens." DNA tests are considered among the most accurate and fast, with same-day testing available for organisms like E. coli or salmonella, says Morgan Wallace. Some manufacturers don't wait for results, since produce is perishable, but that introduces the risk of a produce recall if a pathogen has been identified after shipment. Others hold the product until test results are confirmed, but that practice adds holding costs and reduces the shelf life.

An anonymous reader writes: A couple months ago, we discussed news that Mozilla was planning to give back to the open source projects they rely on, to the tune of $1 million. Now, Mozilla has announced the first round of awards, giving out $503,000 in the process. The biggest payout, $200,000, went to Bro, who makes network monitoring software. They plan to use the funds to create "a public repository for sharing 3rd-party scripts and plug-ins." The Django project received $150,000, and they'll use it to "rewrite the core of Django to support (among other things) WebSockets and background tasks," and a few other goodies. Mercurial was awarded $75,000, which will go toward "better support for 'blame' (showing who last changed some code) and a better web UI." Also receiving awards were Read The Docs ($48,000), Discourse ($25,000), CodeMirror ($20,000), and BuildBot ($15,000).

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."

HughPickens.com writes: Josh Constine writes at TechCrunch that a company named Gigster is trying to bring the Uber business model to software development. Simply: a user sends them an idea, Gigster passes it on to developers who sign up to build software, and when it's done they send back a functioning app. After converting product requirements into a development plan, they let their group of remote developers start hacking away at the code. It has already resulted in a dating app for Muslim millennials, a way for citizens of the developing world to buy electricity, and has over fifty more projects in the pipeline. The entire development process goes through their app, and they charge a flat fee rather than an hourly rate. Gigster developers who satisfy customers can earn karma points and qualify for higher-paying contracts. One major caveat: Gigster will still own the code to the app it designs for you, and it "leases" the software to you. They say they want to be able to reuse certain components on other projects.

An anonymous reader writes: An article at TechDirt points out that AT&T's big fiber deployment project isn't yet adding up to much. They posted a press release last week saying how they've launched fiber internet in Los Angeles and West Palm Beach, and how they also plan to bring it to 38 other metro areas. But TechDirt notes a few parts they left out: "Nowhere does the company state when these connections will be delivered. Similarly nowhere does the company make clear that it's targeting mostly high-end housing developments where fiber is already in the ground, making costs negligible (the only way you could technically accomplish a deployment of this kind and magically have your CAPEX consistently drop). And while AT&T claims these improvements will reach 14 million residential and commercial locations, AT&T gives no timeline for this accomplishment. That means it could cherry pick a few hundred thousand University condos and housing developments per year and be wrapping up this not-so-epic fiber deployment by 2040 or so. "

blottsie writes with this story from The Daily Dot that the President met with encryption advocates on Thursday and is expected to make a statement on his official stance before the end of the year. From the story: "The Obama administration plans to clarify its stance on strong encryption before Washington shuts down for the holidays. Administration officials met Thursday with the civil-society groups behind a petition urging the White House to back strong, end-to-end encryption over the objections of some law-enforcement and intelligence professionals. Kevin Bankston, director of New America's Open Technology Institute and the coalition's organizer, told the Daily Dot that it was a 'very hopeful meeting.'"

itwbennett writes: In an interview with CSO's Ira Winkler, Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas discusses the agency's cybersecurity role, breaking it down into 2 broad categories: helping protect .govs, and assisting .coms. When asked whether DHS is prepared to handle the additional responsibility that Congress is looking to give the agency, including insider threat detection and mitigation, Mayorkas said the agency has a 'current capacity' to assist .gov and .com to a 'very great' degree. But when asked whether the agency planned to outsource a lot of the capability it has been mandated to perform, as it recently did with intrusion detection, Mayorkas demurred, saying 'it's not a one-size fits all.'

UnknowingFool writes: Facebook has released specifications on their newest Open Rack-compatible hardware server they named Big Sur. It is for AI computing at a large scale. Using eight 300W GPU slots the server is touted to offer more efficient neural network training by using GPUs. The announcement reads in part: "We plan to open-source Big Sur and will submit the design materials to the Open Compute Project (OCP). Facebook has a culture of support for open source software and hardware, and FAIR has continued that commitment by open-sourcing our code and publishing our discoveries as academic papers freely available from open-access sites. We're very excited to add hardware designed for AI research and production to our list of contributions to the community. We want to make it a lot easier for AI researchers to share techniques and technologies. As with all hardware systems that are released into the open, it's our hope that others will be able to work with us to improve it. We believe that this open collaboration helps foster innovation for future designs, putting us all one step closer to building complex AI systems that bring this kind of innovation to our users and, ultimately, help us build a more open and connected world."

Rei writes: After being grounded for six months after a strut failure doomed the launch vehicle, Elon Musk has confirmed rumors that SpaceX plans to try for launch again on December 19th, with a static test firing on December 16th. SpaceX will also attempt a landing of their first stage — not at sea, but on land. Lastly, this will be the first launch of a Falcon 9 "Full Thrust" variant, where the propellants are supercooled (with the oxygen just above its freezing point) to increase their density and thus fuel flow and thrust.

schwit1 sends word that Apple has reportedly suspended plans to offer a live internet-based television service and will focus on being a platform for media companies to sell directly to customers through its App Store instead. Bloomberg reports: "Apple Inc. has suspended plans to offer a live Internet-based television service and is instead focusing on being a platform for media companies to sell directly to customers through its App Store, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. While Apple isn't giving up entirely on releasing a live-TV service, its plan to sell a package of 14 or so channels for $30 to $40 a month has run into resistance from media companies that want more money for their programming, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing a prospective product."

Lucas123 writes: A legacy of lackluster electronic security in healthcare and an increase in the amount of online patient data will lead to an increase in the number of consumers who will have their healthcare records compromised by cyberattacks in 2016, according to a new report from IDC Health Insights. The report, which includes 10 future predictions about the healthcare industry, also predicted that by 2018, cognitive computing would play an increasingly important role in helping physicians to identify the most effective treatment for 50% of patients resulting in a 10% reduction in mortality and a 10% cut in costs. Also by 2018, 30% of worldwide healthcare systems will employ real-time cognitive analysis to provide personalized care leveraging patient's clinical data, directly supported by clinical outcomes and "real world evidence" data — information pulled from patient studies and treatment results. That same year, IDC expects virtual healthcare and computer-assisted surgery to be the norm. Surgeons will use computer-assisted or robotic surgery techniques to assist in planning, simulating, and performing 50% of the most complex surgeries. Conversely, patients will be communicating with physicians via messaging, email and video chat sessions far more often, which will reduce costs and increase convenience.

An anonymous reader writes: Yahoo has confirmed reports from last week by saying it plans to spin off all of its assets aside from its $31 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. "In the reverse spin off, Yahoo's assets and liabilities other than the Alibaba stake would be transferred to a newly formed company, the stock of which would be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders resulting in two separate publicly-traded companies." Their decision was spurred by how stock market traders were weighing the tax risk of spinning off the most valuable part of the company.

The article notes that this probably means trouble for CEO Marissa Mayer: "Ms. Mayer, who was hired in 2012 to turn around Yahoo, had planned to spin off the company's 15 percent stake in Alibaba, bundled with a small-business services unit, into a new company called Aabaco. She then planned to focus on improving the company's core business, the sale of advertising that is shown to the roughly one billion users of Yahoo's apps and websites. Ms. Mayer is now effectively back to square one. Yahoo's core Internet operations are struggling, even though the chief executive has made dozens of acquisitions, added original video and magazine-style content, and released new apps."

New submitter Will Mason writes: The HTC Vive VR headset, originally planned to launch by the end of this year, has been pushed back until April 2016. HTC plans to unveil a second developer kit for the Vive at CES this year, and they plan to make 7,000 additional units available to developers. Recently, HTC's head of marketing, who said on stage that the product would launch this year, jumped ship for the secretive Magic Leap startup in Florida.

An anonymous reader writes: For the past 12 years, NetHack 3.4.3 has been the most recent version of the classic roguelike dungeon exploration game. On 7 December 2015, the official NetHack DevTeam announced the release of NetHack 3.6.0. While the release contains some new features, the most exciting part of the announcement is perhaps the DevTeam's move toward a more open development model: "We've migrated our internal source repository to Git, with plans of providing a publicly available 'current maintenance version' in the future." Bugzilla will be used for defect tracking.

NetHack 3.6.0 is dedicated to the memory of the author Terry Pratchett. Besides the Tourist character class inspired by his stories, NetHack now contains "a huge number of quotes from many of the Discworld novels."