Monthly Archives: December 2016

Pull Requests Are Accepted At About The Same Rate, Regardless of Gender

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An anonymous reader writes:

Remember that story about how women “get pull requests accepted more (except when you know they’re women).” The study actually showed that men also had their code accepted more often when their gender wasn’t known, according to Tech In Asia — and more importantly, the lower acceptance rates (for both men and women) applied mostly to code submitters from outside the GitHub community. “Among insiders, there’s no evidence of discrimination against women. In fact, the reverse is true: women who are on the inside and whose genders are easy to discern get more of their code approved, and to a statistically significant degree.” Eight months after the story ran, the BBC finally re-wrote their original headline (“Women write better code, study suggests”) and added the crucial detail that acceptance rates for women fell “if they were not regulars on the service and were identified by their gender.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Pull Requests Are Accepted At About The Same Rate, Regardless of Gender

The Adorable Story Of How Pokémon Go Helped Rescue A Kitten

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On a particularly hot day last summer, Imgur poster Joelalmeidaptg was walking down the street playing Pokémon Go when they heard a kitten crying for help from behind a nearby electrical post. Months later, the cat, named Spock, is thriving in its new home thanks to an unlikely string of events.

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Source: Kotaku – The Adorable Story Of How Pokémon Go Helped Rescue A Kitten

More Mysterious Radio Signals Have Been Detected Coming From Outside Our Galaxy

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We have been picking up multiple radio signals that have been coming from the same location in space. I don’t know why scientists are wasting time coming up with hypotheses when it’s obviously aliens.

Currently, the leading hypothesis for the source of the Milky Way’s FRB is the cataclysmic collision of two neutron stars, which forms a black hole. The idea is that as this collision happens, huge amounts of short-lived radio energy are blasted out into space. But the repeating nature of these distant signals, all coming from the same place, suggest that can’t be the case – at least for these particular FRB. Instead, the 17 radio bursts detected from FRB 121102 indicate that something less dramatic is going on – the most likely hypothesis at the moment for these outer-galactic FRB is that they’re coming from an exotic object such as a young neutron star, that’s rotating with enough power to regularly emit the extremely bright pulses.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – More Mysterious Radio Signals Have Been Detected Coming From Outside Our Galaxy

Foxconn Wants To Replace Nearly Every Human With Robots

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It isn’t any kind of surprise, as this is basically every production factory’s dream. What is interesting is that the company is already close to the goal, with many of its factories having fully automated processes with minimal human workers. A Foxconn manager notes that humans can still be pretty useful because they have the flexibility to quickly switch from one task to another, however.

Foxconn Electronics is automating production at its factories in China in three phases, aiming to fully automate entire factories eventually, according to general manager Dai Jia-peng for Foxconn’s Automation Technology Development Committee. In the first phase, Foxconn aims to set up individual automated work stations for work that workers are unwilling to do or is dangerous, Dai said. Entire production lines will be automated to decrease the number of robots used during the second phase, Dai noted. In the third phase, entire factories will be automated with only a minimal number of workers assigned for production, logistics, testing and inspection processes, Dai indicated.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Foxconn Wants To Replace Nearly Every Human With Robots

Astronomers Detect Mysterious Radio Signals Coming From Outside Our Galaxy

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This week the New York Post reported on “powerful radio signals which have been detected repeatedly in the same exact location in space,” generating as much energy as the sun does in a whole day, in “the only known instance in which these signals have been found twice in the same location in space.” Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes Science Alert:
Back in March, scientists detected 10 powerful bursts of radio signals coming from the same location in space. And now researchers have just picked up six more of the signals seemingly emanating from the same region, far beyond our Milky Way… Currently, the leading hypothesis for the source of the Milky Way’s FRB is the cataclysmic collision of two neutron stars, which forms a black hole. The idea is that as this collision happens, huge amounts of short-lived radio energy are blasted out into space. But the repeating nature of these distant signals, all coming from the same place, suggest that can’t be the case… the most likely hypothesis at the moment for these outer-galactic FRB is that they’re coming from an exotic object such as a young neutron star, that’s rotating with enough power to regularly emit the extremely bright pulses.
But the New York Post thinks it’s aliens.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Astronomers Detect Mysterious Radio Signals Coming From Outside Our Galaxy

Watch This Guy Go Full Jackie Chan On The Scooter Thief Who Stole His Phone

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I don’t advocate taking the law into your own hands, but I love watching other people do it on the internet. After some goober on a scooter steals a trucker’s phone, the dude goes full-on Jackie Chan to enact some swift street justice.

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Source: Kotaku – Watch This Guy Go Full Jackie Chan On The Scooter Thief Who Stole His Phone

Rust-Based Redox OS Had A Busy Year With Rewriting Its Kernel, Writing A File-System

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Redox OS started development mid-way through last year while this year things really took off for this Rust-written operating system from scratch. The project has provided a recap of all of their OS accomplishments for 2016…

Source: Phoronix – Rust-Based Redox OS Had A Busy Year With Rewriting Its Kernel, Writing A File-System

Russian Operation Hacked A Vermont Utility, Showing Risk To U.S. Electrical Grid Security

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Malware code associated with “Grizzly Steppe,” a Russian hacking operation, was found at electric utility Burlington Electric, which serves nearly 20,000 customers in Vermont. The code was found on a laptop that was not connected to their grid systems.

Burlington Electric said in a statement that the company detected a malware code used in the Grizzly Steppe operation in a laptop that was not connected to the organization’s grid systems. The firm said it took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alert federal authorities. …Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said he was briefed on the attempts to penetrate the electric grid by Vermont State Police on Friday evening. “This is beyond hackers having electronic joy rides — this is now about trying to access utilities to potentially manipulate the grid and shut it down in the middle of winter,” Leahy said in a statement. “That is a direct threat to Vermont and we do not take it lightly.”

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Russian Operation Hacked A Vermont Utility, Showing Risk To U.S. Electrical Grid Security

Microsoft Bringing New "Game Mode" To Windows 10 For Enhanced PC Gaming Experience

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Games may run better than ever in an upcoming version of Windows 10, which will reportedly come with a mode that will allocate resources to improve gaming performance. I bet the catch is that it will only work for games launched from the Windows Store.

Microsoft is working on a brand new “Game Mode” feature for Windows 10 that will enhance the PC gaming experience by minimizing resources used by running apps to almost nothing and allocating freed up resources to the game, making it run faster, better and smoother overall. …Our own sources have said this feature works similarly to how Xbox One handles running a game. Xbox OS, when a game is launched, will allocate resources to make sure the game is running the best it possibly can. Up until now, Windows hasn’t had a built-in option for this that benefits games directly, but with the Creators Update that will be changing.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Microsoft Bringing New “Game Mode” To Windows 10 For Enhanced PC Gaming Experience

Mesa Saw More Than 10,000 Commits This Year From Record Number Of Contributors

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Unless Marek delivers another one of his big patch-sets to provide some new feature/improvement to RadeonSI, the OpenGL shader cache magically lands, or some other big surprise to end out the year, here are some final statistics about Mesa’s impressive developments in 2017…

Source: Phoronix – Mesa Saw More Than 10,000 Commits This Year From Record Number Of Contributors

'Watership Down' Author Richard Adams Died On Christmas Eve At Age 96

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Initially rejected by several publishers, “Watership Down” (1972) went on to become one of the best-selling fantasy books of all time. Last Saturday the book’s author died peacefully at the age of 96. Long-time Slashdot reader haruchai remembers some of the author’s other books: In addition to his much-beloved story about anthropomorphic rabbits, Adams penned two fantasy books set in the fictional Beklan Empire, first Shardik (1974) about a hunter pursuing a giant bear he believes to be imbued with divine power, and Maia (1984), a peasant girl sold into slavery who becomes entangled in a war between neighboring countries. Adams also wrote a collection of short stories called “Tales From Watership Down” in 1996, and the original “Watership Down” was also made into a movie and an animated TV series. In announcing his death, Richard’s family also included a quote from the original “Watership Down”.

“It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and to try to get used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses.

“‘You needn’t worry about them,’ said his companion. ‘They’ll be alright — and thousands like them.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – ‘Watership Down’ Author Richard Adams Died On Christmas Eve At Age 96

Russian Hackers Penetrated The US Electricity Grid, Say Officials

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Slashdot reader DogDude quotes the Washington Post:
A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials. While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter, the penetration of the nation’s electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability… American officials, including one senior administration official, said they are not yet sure what the intentions of the Russians might have been. The penetration may have been designed to disrupt the utility’s operations or as a test by the Russians to see whether they could penetrate a portion of the grid… According to the report by the FBI and DHS, the hackers involved in the Russian operation used fraudulent emails that tricked their recipients into revealing passwords.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Russian Hackers Penetrated The US Electricity Grid, Say Officials