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An anonymous reader shares a report: For many middle and high school students, giving an in-class presentation was a rite of passage. Teachers would call up students, one by one, to present their work in front of the class and, though it was often nerve wracking, many people claim it helped turn them into more confident public speakers. "Coming from somebody with severe anxiety, having somebody force me to do a public presentation was the best idea to happen in my life," one woman recently tweeted. According to a recent survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, oral communication is one of the most sought-after skills in the workplace, with over 90 percent of hiring managers saying it's important. Some educators also credit in-class presentations with building essential leadership skills, and increasing students' confidence and understanding of material.

But in the past few years, students have started calling out in-class presentations as discriminatory to those with anxiety, demanding that teachers offer alternative options. This week, a tweet posted by 15-year-old high school student declaring "Stop forcing students to present in front of the class and give them a choice not to" garnered over 130,000 retweets and nearly half a million likes. A similar sentiment tweeted in January also racked up thousands of likes and retweets. And teachers are listening.

According to a new report from Bankrate, actuarial science, the formal term for the study of insurance, was ranked the most valuable college major.

"The actuarial science profession is interesting because students don't need advanced degrees to gain livable wages, but instead are certified through a series of exams overseen by the industry's professional organizations," said Bankrate.com analyst Adrian Garcia in an interview. "Students typically pass one to two of these exams while in school and then go on and complete others while working, earning raises and bonuses as they pass." Bloomberg reports: Actuarial science majors earn an average annual salary of $108,658 and have a better-than-average unemployment rate at 2.3 percent. And at a time when student debt is at a record high, these graduates are less likely to incur the added expense of additional schooling and delayed earning potential. Less than 1 in 4 graduates pursue advanced degrees. The study ranked 162 majors with labor forces of at least 15,000 people based on average annual income, employment status and whether those graduates went on to pursue a higher degree within 12 months. Income accounted for 70 percent of the weighted ranking, unemployment for 20 percent and 10 percent was awarded to career paths that did not demand additional education. The data was derived from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2016 American Community Survey.

Recently the CFO of Stripe revealed a surprising statistic: As our global economy increasingly comes to run on technology-enabled rails and every company becomes a tech company, demand for high-quality software engineers is at an all-time high. A recent study from Stripe and Harris Poll found that 61 percent of C-suite executives believe access to developer talent is a threat to the success of their business. Perhaps more surprisingly -- as we mark a decade after the financial crisis -- this threat was even ranked above capital constraints.

And yet, despite being many corporations' most precious resource, developer talents are all too often squandered. Collectively, companies today lose upward of $300 billion a year paying down "technical debt," as developers pour time into maintaining legacy systems or dealing with the ramifications of bad software... When deployed correctly, developers can be economic multipliers -- coefficients that dramatically ratchet up the output of the teams and companies of which they're a part.
His article even ends with tips for managers about how to get the most out of their developers.

• Consider very carefully the current and potential allocation of developer time.
• Embrace the cloud, saving in-house developers to work on higher-impact projects.
• Hire leaders who have technical backgrounds, so they can make better hiring and strategic decisions, and offer better management of developers.

But first managers have to decide if they agree with his initial premise.

Are software developers more valuable to companies than money?

InfoWorld described the move as a "breakthrough": As expected, Python has climbed into the Top 3 of the Tiobe index of language popularity, achieving that milestone for the first time ever in the September 2018 edition of the index. With a rating of 7.653 percent, Python placed third behind first-place Java, which had a rating of 17.436 percent, and second-place C, rated at 15.447. Python displaced C++, which finished third last month and took fourth place this month, with a rating of 7.394 percent...

Python also has been scoring high in two other language rankings:

- The PyPL Popularity of Programming Language index, where it ranked No. 1 this month, as it has done before, and has had the most growth in the past five years.

- The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings, where Python again placed third.
Tiobe notes that Python's arrival in the top 3 "really took a long time," since it first entered their chart at the beginning of the 1990s. But today, "It is already the first choice at universities (for all kinds of subjects for which programming is demanded) and is now also conquering the industrial world." In February Tiobe also added a new programming language to their index: SQL. (Since "SQL appears to be Turing complete.")

"Other interesting moves this month are: Rust jumps from #36 to #31, Groovy from #44 to #34 and Julia from #50 to #39."

U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Friday that he was ready to slap tariffs on virtually all Chinese imports into the United States, threatening duties on another $267 billion in Chinese goods on top of $200 billion in imports now primed for levies in coming days. Reuters: The moves would sharply escalate Trump's trade war with Beijing over his demands for major changes in economic, trade and technology policy. China has threatened retaliation, which could include action against U.S. companies operating there. Hours after a public comment period closed on his $200 billion China tariff list, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was "being strong on China because I have to be."

"The $200 billion we are talking about could take place very soon depending on what happens with them. To a certain extent its going to be up to China," Trump said. "And I hate to say this, but behind that is another $267 billion ready to go on short notice if I want. That totally changes the equation." [...] The $200 billion list, which includes some consumer products such as cameras and recording devices, luggage, handbags, tires and vacuum cleaners, would be subject to tariffs of 10 percent to 25 percent. Cell phones, the biggest U.S. import from China, have so far been spared, but would be engulfed if Trump activates the $267 billion tariff list. Further reading: Apple says Trump's China tariffs are going to hurt the company.

pgmrdlm shares a report from The Verge: Best known for coining the phrase "net neutrality" and his book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Wu has a new book coming out in November called The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age. In it, he argues compellingly for a return to aggressive antitrust enforcement in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, saying that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other huge tech companies are a threat to democracy as they get bigger and bigger. "We live in America, which has a strong and proud tradition of breaking up companies that are too big for inefficient reasons," Wu told me on this week's Vergecast. "We need to reverse this idea that it's not an American tradition. We've broken up dozens of companies."

"I think if you took a hard look at the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, the argument that the effects of those acquisitions have been anticompetitive would be easy to prove for a number of reasons," says Wu. And breaking up the company wouldn't be hard, he says. "What would be the harm? You'll have three competitors. It's not 'Oh my god, if you get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, well then the whole world's going to fall apart.' It would be like 'Okay, now you have some companies actually trying to offer you an alternative to Facebook.'" Breaking up Facebook (and other huge tech companies like Google and Amazon) could be simple under the current law, suggests Wu. But it could also lead to a major rethinking of how antitrust law should work in a world where the giant platform companies give their products away for free, and the ability for the government to restrict corporate power seems to be diminishing by the day. And it demands that we all think seriously about the conditions that create innovation. "I think everyone's steering way away from the monopolies, and I think it's hurting innovation in the tech sector," says Wu.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: As our global economy increasingly comes to run on technology-enabled rails and every company becomes a tech company, demand for high-quality software engineers is at an all-time high. A recent study from Stripe and Harris Poll found that 61 percent of C-suite executives believe access to developer talent is a threat to the success of their business. Perhaps more surprisingly -- as we mark a decade after the financial crisis -- this threat was even ranked above capital constraints. And yet, despite being many corporations' most precious resource, developer talents are all too often squandered. Collectively, companies today lose upward of $300 billion a year paying down "technical debt," as developers pour time into maintaining legacy systems or dealing with the ramifications of bad software. This is especially worrisome, given the outsized impact developers have on companies' chances of success. Software developers don't have a monopoly on good ideas, but their skill set makes them a uniquely deep source of innovation, productivity and new economic connections. When deployed correctly, developers can be economic multipliers -- coefficients that dramatically ratchet up the output of the teams and companies of which they're a part.

According to research firm IDC, Apple sold 4.7 million Apple Watch units last quarter, capturing 17 percent of the global market. The only other company close on Apple's heels is Xiaomi, which "trailed Apple by two percentage points in market share and 500,000 unit shipments in the second quarter of the year," reports The Verge. From the report: Fitbit, Huawei, and Garmin are far behind, with IDC reporting that higher demand for more fully featured smartwatches is driving demand for Apple products and reducing the popularity of lower-cost fitness trackers. IDC stresses that this is a natural cycle for consumer electronics and that fitness-focused devices will still have a place in the market going forward. IDC says demand for its LTE-equipped Series 3 device largely drove Apple's wearable sales last quarter, and the device received a number of discounts at big-box retail stores that may have led to a surge in consumer purchases. Refurbished versions of the Apple Watch Series 3 also went up for sale on Apple's retail site starting in February.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Mercedes-Benz, the world's largest maker of luxury cars, is rolling out its first in a series of battery-powered models, adding to a growing array of high-end brands targeting Tesla. The Mercedes EQC crossover starts production in the first half of next year, part of a plan to develop its EQ electric line, Daimler AG Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche told reporters in Stockholm at the car's world premiere. The company intended to invest $12 billion on the electric-car push, but the spending has become "more than that," he said Tuesday, without specifying figures. "There is no alternative to betting on electric cars, and we're going all in," Zetsche said. "It is starting right now." The new EQC -- roughly the size of the brand's popular GLC SUV -- features a range of more than 280 miles and accelerates to 62 mph in as little as 5.1 seconds. The Model X has a range of 237 miles. Daimler doesn't plan to establish a dedicated electric assembly plant and will instead build the vehicles at the same sites as conventional automobiles to be able to better adjust output, Zetsche said, adding that he expects demand to mainly eat into sales of combustion cars rather than lure new customers.

At least dozens of people have received an email from Google informing them that the internet giant responded to a request from the FBI demanding the release of user data, news outlet Motherboard reported Tuesday, citing several people who claimed to have received the email. The email did not specify whether Google released the requested data to the FBI. From the report: The unusual notice appears to be related to the case of Colton Grubbs, one of the creators of LuminosityLink, a $40 remote access tool (or RAT), that was marketed to hack and control computers remotely. Grubs pleaded guilty last year to creating and distributing the hacking tool to hundreds of people. Several people on Reddit, Twitter, and on HackForums, a popular forum where criminals and cybersecurity enthusiast discuss and sometimes share hacking tools, reported receiving the email. [...] The email included a legal process number. When Motherboard searched for it within PACER, the US government's database for court cases documents, it showed that it was part of a case that's still under seal.

Ars Technica sees new $600 "premium Chromebooks" Dell, Samsung, HP, and Lenovo as a growing challenge to Windows, proving that Chrome OS is reaching beyond the education market. These $600 machines aren't aimed at those same students. Lenovo reps told us that its new Chromebook was developed because the company was seeing demand for Chromebooks from users with a bit more disposable income. For example, new college students that had used Chrome OS at high school and families who wanted the robustness Chrome OS offers are looking for machines that are more attractive, use better materials, and are a bit faster and more powerful. The $600 machines fit that role.

And that's why Microsoft should be concerned. This demand shows a few things. Perhaps most significantly of all, it shows that Chrome OS's mix of Web applications, possibly extended with Android applications, is good enough for a growing slice of home and education users. Windows still has the application advantage overall, but the relevance of these applications is diminishing as Web applications continue to improve... Second, this demand makes clear that exposure to Chrome OS in school is creating sustained interest in, and even commitment to, the platform. High school students are wanting to retain that familiar environment as they move on. The ecosystem they're a part of isn't the Windows ecosystem. Finally, it also shows that Chrome OS's relatively clean-slate approach (sure, it's Linux underneath, but it's not really being pushed as a way of running traditional Linux software) has advantages that are appealing even to home users. The locked down, highly secure Chrome OS machines require negligible maintenance while being largely immune to most extant malware.

Russia isn't the first country to launch a floating nuclear power plant. 50 years ago America's army built a floating nuclear power plant to supply energy to the Panama Canal Zone. Even though it's now being dismantled in Texas -- a four-year job -- China has plans to build as many as 20 floating nuclear power plants.

Gayle BAS quotes the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Proponents say that floating nuclear plants have major advantages over land-based power plants: They have easy access to cooling water and can be quickly installed near coastal cities with rapidly growing energy demands. And unlike other types of energy that produce relatively few climate-altering emissions, nuclear power plants can run 24/7.

But as with onshore nuclear reactors, the closely related issues of safety and economics could be showstoppers.

Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday criticized the FCC on its response to Verizon's throttling of firefighters' data speeds as they battled a major wildfire in Northern California. "In a letter Friday, Senator Edward Markey and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo demanded answers from the FCC over what steps it is currently taking to address 'critical threats to public safety,' citing its decision to repeal Obama-era net neutrality protections," reports Gizmodo. From the report: The 2015 Open Internet Order -- overturned by the FCC's Republican majority last winter -- reclassified internet providers like Verizon as common carriers under Title II of the Federal Communications Act, granting the FCC regulatory authority that, in this instance, would have allowed the commission to investigate and potential penalize Verizon for its decision. At Chairman Ajit Pai's direction, the commission abdicated that authority this year. It no longer has the power to establish rules prohibiting Verizon from throttling emergency services, or charging police and fire departments additional fees to maintain their communications at optimal speeds when usage peaks -- say, during a wildfire, or an earthquake, or a mass shooting.

"The FCC has incorrectly suggested that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could sufficiently fill this void," wrote Markey and Eschoo, whose congressional districting includes portions of Santa Clara. "We strongly disagree with that assertion." In their letter, the Democratic lawmakers urged the FCC to make use of its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and investigate the matter, saying that while the FTC may find Verizon's actions exemplify an "unfair and deceptive practice," both agencies should use "all of the tools available" to resolve this public safety matter. "To do nothing is unacceptable," they said.

More than a dozen tech NGOs and human rights groups have issued an open letter calling on Google to stop work on a censored search engine project in China. From a report: Organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now and others released the letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday, saying the tech giant's plans to release a censored version of its search engine app to users in China represent an "alarming capitulation by Google on human rights." The project, dubbed Dragonfly, was first reported by The Intercept earlier this month. According to audio of a staff meeting, obtained by the New York Times, Pichai said that "if we were to do our mission well, we are to think seriously about how to do more in China. However, he went on to say that Google was "not close to launching a search product in China."

"Not enough people are paying attention to this economic trend," writes Bill Gates, challenging the widespread use of forecasts and policies based on a "supply and demand" economic model. An anonymous reader quotes the Gates Notes blog: Software doesn't work like this. Microsoft might spend a lot of money to develop the first unit of a new program, but every unit after that is virtually free to produce. Unlike the goods that powered our economy in the past, software is an intangible asset. And software isn't the only example: data, insurance, e-books, even movies work in similar ways.

The portion of the world's economy that doesn't fit the old model just keeps getting larger. That has major implications for everything from tax law to economic policy to which cities thrive and which cities fall behind, but in general, the rules that govern the economy haven't kept up. This is one of the biggest trends in the global economy that isn't getting enough attention. If you want to understand why this matters, the brilliant new book Capitalism Without Capital by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake is about as good an explanation as I've seen.... They don't act like there's something evil about the trend or prescribe hard policy solutions. Instead they take the time to convince you why this transition is important and offer broad ideas about what countries can do to keep up in a world where the "Ec 10" supply and demand chart is increasingly irrelevant.
"What the book reinforced for me is that lawmakers need to adjust their economic policymaking to reflect these new realities," Gates writes, adding "a lot has changed since the 1980s. It's time the way we think about the economy does, too."

An anonymous reader writes: Verizon testified Friday before a California State Assembly committee about why its "throttling" of county firefighters was completely unrelated to net neutrality. Then they surprised everyone by announcing that they were lifting all data caps on public safety workers with unlimited data plans, including federal justice agencies like the FBI, CIA and Secret Service.

Verizon claimed this was completely unrelated to the fact that 13 California Congressmen are now demanding that the FTC investigate Verizon's throttling of firefighters battling California's 290,692-acre wildfire. "It is unacceptable for communications providers to deceive their customers," the Congressmen wrote, "but when the consumer in question is a government entity tasked with fire and emergency services, we can't afford to wait a moment longer."
Meanwhile, the California Professional Firefighters, which represents more than 30,000 firefighters and emergency personnel, came out in support of a strict new California law that restores net neutrality provisions, saying their group had "come to conclude that if net neutrality is not restored, the effect could be disastrous to the public's safety."

One county fire chief even testified this was the third time in eight months they've been throttled by Verizon.

Four US senators, members of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter on Wednesday to Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the largest voting machine vendor in the US, asking for clarifications on why the vendor is trying to discourage independent security reviews of its products. From a report: The four senators who signed the letter are Kamala D. Harris (D-CA), Mark Warner (D-VA), Susan Collins (R-ME), and James Lankford (R-OK). The senators sent the letter to ES&S following the conclusion of the Voting Village at the DEF CON 26 security conference held in Las Vegas at the start of the month, where security researchers found several security vulnerabilities in the company's products. "We are disheartened that ES&S chose to dismiss these demonstrations as unrealistic and that your company is not supportive of independent testing," the letter reads. "Many of the world's leading electronics and software companies have opened their arms to the research community, maintaining active presences at the largest security research conferences and inviting 'white hat' hackers to probe their products to identify how they can improve product security," the letter continued. At DEF CON, security researchers found vulnerabilities in the voting machines of other vendors. Only ES&S is mentioned in the senators' letter because of the company's dismissive approach to external security research.

China has shut down numerous blockchain-related news accounts on the WeChat social app, and banned hotels in downtown Beijing from hosting events promoting cryptocurrencies, in a renewed crackdown on activities related to the digital money. From a report: At least eight blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused online media outlets -- some of which raised several million dollars in venture capital -- found their official public accounts on WeChat blocked on Tuesday evening, due to violations against new regulations from China's top internet watchdog. Tencent, operator of WeChat, said in a statement that it has shut down these accounts permanently as they are "suspected of publishing information related to ICOs [initial coin offerings] and speculations on cryptocurrency trading." It cited regulations enacted earlier this month by the Cyberspace Administration of China, which, among other things, demand content providers within chat apps comply with "national interests" and "public orders."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's an epidemic that has been affecting indie game developers for years. When a game launches, strange emails start coming in. Sometimes they claim to be reviewers for websites that don't exist. Other times, they pretend to work for major outlets, using misleading email addresses to con developers out of their games. The scams have grown increasingly elaborate over the years, and for small-time developers who don't have a ton of experience dealing with press, it can be tough to sort out which requests are legitimate. (The problem appears to be more common in the indie scene -- one PR rep working in big-budget games told me they don't receive any scam requests like this.)

Emily Morganti, who handles PR for adventure games like Thimbleweed Park and West of Loathing, said in an email that these key scammers have become a regular feature of her job, like yanking weeds out of a garden. "I have the benefit of working for a lot of different indie devs, so I notice patterns that a developer who's only putting out their one game wouldn't see," she said. [...] Last fall, someone who went by the name Dmitry Tseptsov sent several emails to Morganti to ask for codes, explaining that he operated a coffee shop in Ukraine where he'd give out video games as prizes for trivia. "Even 1 key will help me a lot, for which I will be grateful," he wrote. "The cafe opened quite recently, but has a demand, and many people go to us. I mean, for my part, I promise to advertise your game." The coffee shop did exist, but Tseptsov had nothing to do with it, and as one developer discovered, the story was full of holes.

Google is putting an artificial intelligence system in charge of its data center cooling after the system proved it could cut energy use. From a report: Now Google and its AI company DeepMind are taking the project further; instead of recommendations being implemented by human staff, the AI system is directly controlling cooling in the data centers that run services including Google Search, Gmail and YouTube. "This first-of-its-kind cloud-based control system is now safely delivering energy savings in multiple Google data centers," Google said. Data centers use vast amount of energy and as the demand for cloud computing rises even small tweaks to areas like cooling can produce significant time and cost savings. Google's decision to use its own DeepMind-created system is also a good plug for its AI business. Every five minutes, the AI pulls a snapshot of the data center cooling system from thousands of sensors. This data is fed into deep neural networks, which predict how different choices will affect future energy consumption.