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Submission + - Judicial Watch claims California worked to censor thier social media posts (judicialwatch.org)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: On their web site, Judicial Watch claims that documents from California's Secretary of State reveals that: "... state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google (YouTube)) to censor posts about the 2020 election. Included in these documents were “misinformation briefings” emails that were compiled by communications firm SKDK, that lists Biden for President as their top client of 2020. The documents show how the state agency successfully pressured YouTube to censor a Judicial Watch video concerning the vote by mail and a Judicial Watch lawsuit settlement about California voter roll clean up."

While You Tube et al are private companies, and can do what they want, if this is true, does this action by California state officials cross a line? It would seem the opportunities for abuse are endless.

Comment Re:No. Universal answer to all headline questions (Score 1) 205

by KindMind (#61158194) Attached to: After 20 Years, Have We Achieved the Vision of the Agile Manifesto?

"... is not a one size fits all model ..." - I think this is very true. In my case, we had an existing product line that our team developed and revised for a long period of years, in use at thousands of locations. We used an iterative process that made frequent releases, etc. But it wasn't "Agile!". So new manglement comes in and decreed "Agile!". However, a lot of our work was fixing bugs, mixed in with occasional new features. We did complex things in our software, and bugs sometimes took a while to figure out. So a lot of the work was really hard to assign points to, etc. It really wasn't suited to "Agile!" as defined by manglement with the required scrum masters. A second side effect was that "Agile!" became a way for manglement to micromanage everything we were doing, and to force their design decisions on the dev team - kind of the opposite of what Agile intended. I got laid off and found a new job, so no longer my problem, thank heavens :)

Submission + - New satellite can take radar images even inside of buildings (futurism.com) 1

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: Futurism reports that Capella Space has launched a satellite that uses radar to take images down to a 50 centimeter square resolution. From the article:

The satellite beams down a powerful 9.65 GHz radio signal toward its target, and then collects and interprets the signal as it bounces back up into orbit. And because the satellite is sending down its own signal rather than passively capturing light, sometimes those signals can even penetrate right through a building’s wall, peering at the interior like Superman’s X-ray vision.

Submission + - Toyota adding cloud gathering of vehicle data, making it available for insurance (theregister.com) 1

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: From The Register: Toyota has expanded its collaboration with Amazon Web Services in ways that will see many of its models upload performance data into the Amazonian cloud to expand the services the auto-maker offers to drivers and fleet owners ... Toyota reckons the data could turn into “new contextual services such as car share, rideshare, full-service lease, and new corporate and consumer services such as proactive vehicle maintenance notifications and driving behavior-based insurance.”

Submission + - Supernovae may explain mass extinctions of marine animals during Pliocene era (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: The Register has an article on the possibility that a super nova or a series of them could explain a mass die-off of marine animals around 2.6 million years ago.

From the article: A gigantic supernova explosion may have triggered mass extinctions for creatures living in Earth’s prehistoric oceans some 2.6 million years ago, according to new research published in Astrobiology. Marine animals like the megalodon ... suddenly disappeared during the late Pliocene. Around the same time, scientists ... noticed a peak in the iron-60 isotope in ancient seabeds.

Comment Re: Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left (Score 3, Insightful) 726

by KindMind (#55318187) Attached to: 20 Years of Stuff That Matters

I agree with this. I am about the same (other than I browse at 0, not -1). I hit slashdot every day, not really for the stories so much as the comments. Glory days past or not, there are still a lot of good comments well worth reading. I like that there are people willing to take the time to make a reasoned case for their positions, whether I agree or not.

Submission + - Infosys faces racial discrimination lawsuit. (dallasnews.com)

Submitted by Bartles
Bartles writes: From the article:

""Infosys maintains roughly 200,000 employees working in the United States," Green's suit said. While less than 5 percent of the U. S. population is of the South Asian race and national origin, roughly 93 percent to 94 percent of Infosys's United States workforce "is of the South Asian national origin, (primarily Indian)."

"This disproportionately South Asian and Indian workforce, by race and national origin, is a result of Infosys's intentional employment discrimination against individuals who are not South Asian, including discrimination in the hiring, promotion, compensation and termination of individuals," the suit said. "

Submission + - Advanced in 3D printing: How about a house? (digitaltrends.com) 2

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: Digital Trends writes about a company 3D printing houses: "... Rather than assembling pieces printed elsewhere, engineering company Apis Cor has created the very first 3D-printed house using a mobile printer on-site. Printing the self-bearing walls, partitions, and building envelope took the machine 24 hours to complete. The final result is the first house printed as a whole with an area of 409 square feet."

Submission + - The Empire strikes back: Gaming Waze and others (usatoday.com)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: USA today writes that Waze and others are causing traffic planners to try to figure out how to gain control back. From the article: While traffic savvy GPS apps like Waze and Google Maps have provided users a way to get around traffic, it has caused massive headaches for city planners ... With highways frequently congested, navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze started telling drivers to hop off the freeway at Fremont's Mission Boulevard, cut through residential streets and then hop back on the highway where things were clearer — much to the distress of the people who lived there. “The commuters didn’t live or work in Fremont and didn’t care about our residential neighborhoods,” said Noe Veloso, Fremont’s principal transportation engineer ... Fremont instituted commute-hour turn restrictions on the most heavily used residential cut-through routes. The city also partnered with Waze through its Connected Citizens Program in order to share data and information, such as the turn restrictions, so that the app takes them into account. The result has been effective, but Veloso is worried the changes may simply reroute commuters into other neighborhoods.

Submission + - Fukushima to get "ice walls" to stop ground and sea water contamination (nytimes.com)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: The New York Times reports that Japan is freezing the ground around the Fukushima nuclear plant to stop the flow of groundwater and seawater contamination. From the article: "Built by the central government at a cost of 35 billion yen, or some $320 million, the ice wall is intended to seal off the reactor buildings within a vast, rectangular-shaped barrier of man-made permafrost. If it becomes successfully operational as soon as this autumn, the frozen soil will act as a dam to block new groundwater from entering the buildings."

Comment Re:But will they pursue charges? (Score 3, Interesting) 214

by KindMind (#52355349) Attached to: New York Criminalizes the Use Of Ticket-Buying Bots

Yes - the companies selling the tickets need to have a financial stake in stopping the bots. Without a financial motive, the ticket sellers will continue to have crappy code. Currently, the incentives are all wrong. The ticket sellers sell tickets quickly and get all their fees under the current system. The bulk scalpers are good business for them, and they have no reason to stop them.

If anything, the ticket sellers should be required to have a system that prevents bulk scalping, with penalties for failing to do this.

Submission + - Universities and companies using them not subject to H1B visa caps (breitbart.com) 1

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: A Breitbart article documents that universities (and companies working with them) are not subject to the H1B visa caps. From the article: "... universities and many allied name-brand companies have quietly imported an extra workforce of at least 100,000 lower-wage foreign professionals in place of higher-wage American graduates, above the supposed annual cap of 85,000 new H-1Bs. Less than one-sixth of these extra 100,000 outsourced hires are the so-called high-tech computer experts that dominate media coverage of the contentious H-1B private-sector outsourcing debate."

Submission + - Elon Musk's latest idea: Let's nuke Mars (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: The Register reports that Elon Musk, in an appearance on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, said that to begin with, human residents on the red planet would need to live in "transparent domes". Before a move to more hospitable habitats one needs only "to warm it up" and Musk thinks there's a fast way and a slow way to do that. The fast way "is drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles" and the slow way "is to release greenhouse gases, like we are doing on Earth."

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