Southern California Edison (SCE) is currently in the process of cutting about 500 IT workers at its Irwindale offices and replacing them with cheaper H-1B visa holders working for Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services; two India based IT outsourcing firms. SCE will save about $40,000 per worker, about $16 million a year by replacing American workers with foreigners on an H-1B visa. The layoffs began in August and are expected to be completed by the end of March.

For today's Safer Internet Day Google is promoting a "safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones" by giving you a 2 GB Google Drive bonus for checking your security settings. To be eligible for the bonus, go to this page to verify your current account settings to make sure they are up to date. Although the three simple steps only take a few seconds to review, the storage bonus, unfortunately, does not get applied until around February 28th.

m0n0wall is an embedded firewall distribution based on FreeBSD. It provides a small image which can be put on Compact Flash cards, CD-ROMs, or hard disks, and includes a web-based GUI to control all aspects of the firewall without having to type a single shell command.

The New York Times is asking what the primary wireless technology of the future will be: Traditional wireless carriers operate their services primarily with cell towers, but offer Wi-Fi as a secondary option to bear some of the load. Upstarts FreedomPop and Republic Wireless do the opposite. They offer services that rely primarily on Wi-Fi networks, and in areas without Wi-Fi, customers can pull a signal from regular cell towers. “They demonstrate just how disruptive a Wi-Fi-first operator can be, and just how much cost they can take out.”

Lenovo, the world’s largest PC manufacturer, has apologized for security flaws in the malware they pre-install on consumer laptops, and attempted to issue instructions on how to fix a flaw that fatally compromised user security. The company was forced to issue a second set of instructions after security experts said that following its first set would do nothing to patch up the security holes the adware created. But even the second set is “incomplete”, according to researchers, and leaves users of the popular Firefox browser vulnerable.

As has been reported everywhere, the FCC has approved Net Neutrality rules and declared broadband a Utility.

It is a sad day for Science Fiction and film fans.

Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have developed a pair of telescopic contact lenses with 2.8x magnification. Really just a pair of super-tiny aluminum telescopes, the contacts are still only about 1.5 millimeters thick, and feature 1 mm-wide channels or pores that allow the required breathability — maintaining airflow. This last part proved to be one of the biggest challenges, requiring years of experimentation.

HP has become the latest “legacy” IT vendor to announce it would ship commodity switches for web-scale data centers that support network management software other than its own. HP Switches will run the Cumulus Linux OS. The company claims the approach can reduce data center operating costs by up to 68 percent. HP’s competitors Dell and Juniper have already announced open commodity network switches of their own. Dell said it would ship data center switches with a Linux-based network operating systems by Cumulus Networks or by Big Switch Networks, as alternatives to its own network OS, last year. Notably, Cisco has not introduced commodity switches. The world’s largest data center networking vendor has built an empire selling tightly coupled hardware-and-software bundles, and cheap open network hardware is a threat to its dominance. However, Cisco too has been slowly offering more software-defined networking/OpenFlow features and compatibility in their hardware.

After 2 years and 10 months, XFCE 4.12 has been released, and its changelog is an impressive list of refinements, improvements, and new features.

"We have seen a concerning trend that is about to spiral out of control: Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) are further on the rise. What’s even more concerning is how they are spreading. After big vendors as Oracle (Java) and Microsoft (Bing and Skype) started bundling, now antivirus vendors have joined the game. We did research on some of the most popular PUP practices among the freeware antivirus vendors, and the results are quite disturbing.

Google's project hosting service, Google Code, is the latest Google product to get the axe. Launched in 2006, the site hosted many FLOSS-type software projects and provided free downloads, source code management, an issue tracker, and wiki pages. Although new project creation is already disabled, the site will stay functional until August 2015 in order to give projects time to migrate to alternatives, such as GitHub and GitLab.

http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/radioexp/

So much for browser security. Researchers who participated in the Pwn2Own hacking contest this week demonstrated remote code execution exploits against the top four browsers, and also hacked the widely used Adobe Reader and Flash Player plug-ins. The Pwn2Own contest takes place every year at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, Canada, and is sponsored by Hewlett-Packard’s Zero Day Initiative program. The contest pits researchers against the latest 64-bit versions of the top four browsers in order to demonstrate Web-based attacks that can execute rogue code on underlying systems.

The latest set of site updates have reworked font sizes to make it easier to configure larger text rendering.

An easier to squeeze mayonnaise bottle might be coming out this year, and easier to squeeze toothpaste could be here in 2017. This is thanks to a liquid-impregnated coating called LiquiGlide that can keep the inside of a container permanently wet and allow its contents to easily slide out. Elmers Products, Inc. is on board, too, and has already signed a contract with LiquiGlide to let you get every drop of glue out of the bottle. Follow the link for videos of the coating in action.

Scientists at the University of Florida have confirmed the Asian and Formosan subterranean termites — both formidable non-native species — are mating in south Florida. The offspring of these species thrive by combining the strongest qualities of their parents. The two species are considered particularly damaging and difficult to control, since they travel underground and burrow up through buildings. What sort of termite do they produce? The bad news is that based on lab results, the hybrid colonies appear to grow faster than those of either species that produced them.

Smartphone thefts are down 40% in London, 22% in San Francisco and 16% in New York, while iPhone thefts are down even further, since the implementation of "kill switches," which allow owners to completely deactivate a phone that has been lost, making a stolen device worthless.

When submitting a story for a piece of news, which site do you link to? Depending on the popularity of the news, many dozens of organizations may have written an article on the topic. Some articles may lack proper grammar/citations or exist behind a paywall. Some sites may have abusive advertisements or frivolous JavaScript usage. You can exclusively use your favorite source, or link to several of the more popular news sites, or simply rely on the user to search for more information.

For almost as long as aircraft carriers have existed, they’ve been equipped with steam-powered catapults to help fighters and bombers get airborne. That’s a remarkably old-fashioned technology when you’re launching stealth fighters that cost upwards of $20 million each. Aircraft carriers are gigantic, but the runways simply aren’t long enough for most planes to generate sufficient lift under their own power.

The Australian senate passed a law to retain all metadata for two years for phone and internet communications. 2500 "metadata police" can now allow accept to phone and internet records. Australians still do not know how much this will cost or who will pay. Several parties have stated that metadata collection can be easily bypassed including George Brandis and other MPs, the Australia Pirate Party and notable commentators.

I'm a stupid American. Even though many foreigners may not speak English fluently, we force everyone to speak it anyway. In 1887, Dr. Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof constructed a neutral language using common root words from many different European languages. This universal language is much easier to learn and shows less favoritism than picking an arbitrary natural language.

There have been several articles in the recent past about Rutan and his retirement project, a motorglider with the ability to take off and land on rough water, smooth water, snow, and unimproved fields. He has said the range will allow flight from California to Hawaii non-stop at 170 knots.

The continent of Antarctica had its hottest day ever in recorded history earlier this week, as temperatures soared to 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 °C) for the first time, eclipsing a record that’s lasted over 50 years.

Verizon Wireless said there are a handful of areas in which it had hoped to increase its spectrum holdings, but will instead use small (or pico) cells to increase frequency reuse on the network rather than simply using a larger block of spectrum. “We simply have to adjust our plans in certain places where we may have anticipated spectrum.” New York and Boston are two markets in which Verizon Wireless did not acquire additional 1.7/2.1 GHz spectrum in the recent auction. Their budget for this year now includes an incremental $500 million for this kind of network densification.

A new report out of Canada suggests that high numbers of students at Canadian universities involves the acceptance of too many "marginally talented" students. University of Saskatchewan researcher, Ken Coates, has proposed reducing Canadian university student populations by 30% -- to be complemented by an increased emphasis on job training programs at technical colleges -- to improve the education and employment outcomes of all student cohorts.

Mark Russinovich, a Microsoft technical fellow and senior engineer, and well-known for his Sysinternals/Winternals products, dropped a bombshell in front of several hundred people during a panel discussion at the ChefCon DevOps conference in the United States. Russinovich told the crowd it was "definitely possible" that Microsoft could, in the future, choose to open up the Windows source code. "It's a new Microsoft," he said. "Every conversation you can imagine about what should we do with our software -- open versus not-open versus services -- has happened," he said. Almost 20 percent of the the company's Azure cloud computing virtual machines run Linux already.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that two researchers have stepped down from the Science Hall of Fame selection panel over claims that cultural bias is limiting the number of female researchers nominated for the honour. No female researchers have been nominated for two years running and former panelists Judy Illes and Catherine Anderson argue in their resignation statements that the lack of nominations reflects a cultural bias that fails to reflect the contributions women make to science nationally and globally.

Popular Science recently reported on a wearable air quality monitor designed and prototyped by electrician, Kevin Hart, and nurse, Laura Moe. They are targeting a late fall 2015 release at a price point of $100 (US).

Police departments across the United States are easy targets for hackers who infect their computers, encrypt their documents and give them a deadline to make a payment to decrypt their data. Over the weekend, some Maine police agencies reported having to pay ransom to hackers in order to keep their files. In Tewksbury, Massachusetts the police chief said he paid a $500 bounty to get back the department's data.

Astronomers are getting ready to do battle with the iRobot corporation over their new lawn mowing robots. The makers of the Roomba are working on a similar device used to mow lawns. Astronomers are concerned about potential interference with radio telescopes. In February, iRobot filed a waiver request with the FCC to use part of the radio spectrum to guide the robots. The company wants to use the frequency band between 6240 and 6740 MHz, which is a frequency that several large radio telescopes use to observe methanol, which is plentiful in stellar nurseries.

Naranda Modi (prime minister of India) and Stephen Harper (prime minister of Canada) recently met in Toronto where they announced a new 5-year agreement for India to purchase uranium from Saskatoon's Cameco corporation to generate nuclear energy in India. In an article at thehindu.com, Modi is reported as describing India's moves to support the so-called "saffron revolution" in which his administration is growing their commitments to nuclear, solar, wind, biomass and energy saving missions in India. The Hindu article states that: "At the heart of Mr. Modi’s speech was his repeated assertion, jan man badla hai, or “The minds of the people have changed," over his 10 months in office, and that India was finally on the move".

Worldwide, statistics show that crickets are the most widely cultivated insects for the human diet and are considered the “gateway bug” for people who choose to eat insects. Crickets are readily available in pet stores as food for turtles, frogs, and other pets. They are considered delicacies or snacks for people in many countries. Cricket flour is now commonly found in protein bars, baked goods, and protein powders. Crickets have been touted as much better for the planet—environmentally and financially—than livestock, due to the supposedly more-efficient rate at which they convert feed into body mass. But in reality, there is very little data to support this.

In the software world, it's long been the practice that you don't purchase software, you purchase a license to use it. But as software increasingly gets woven into other products - like the many chips and circuits that run your modern automobile - this practice starts to chip away at the traditional sense of ownership of physical goods.

Today, Google unveiled it's long anticipated mobile phone service, called Project Fi. However, Google is not building their own network, but relying on the existing Sprint and T-Mobile networks. Because the service can intelligently switch from one LTE network to the other, depending on signal strength, access is initially limited to Nexus 6 owners. Project Fi phones will need a cellular radio that can work with different network types and support a unique SIM that grants access to multiple networks.

Anyone who spends significant time on aircraft probably agrees that internet access at 30,000 feet is pretty cool. But only if the internet access system isn't stupidly tethered to other aircraft systems of critical importance.

Of all the potential solutions offered for Arizona’s water challenges, one has a decidedly science fiction feel: planes flying over the Rockies, seeding clouds with aerosolized silver iodide to stimulate rain and snow. It’s not magic or raindancing but a very real process that dates back to the 1940s. Cloud seeding works by adding ice nuclei, or the initial seed of a rain drop or snowflake, into a cloud that has extra moisture. That’s typically done with silver iodide in an aerosol form. The Central Arizona Project has put about $1 million toward research since 2007, in hopes of increasing the supply in the Colorado River system.

A hi-tech signalling system that will eventually control all of Britain's trains could potentially be hacked to cause a serious crash, according to a scientist who advises the government. Network Rail, which is in charge of the upgrade, acknowledges the threat. "We know that the risk [of a cyber-attack] will increase as we continue to roll out digital technology across the network," a spokesman told the BBC.

(Finally) after years of development, Mailman has reached its third release.

Never saw this one coming: Enlightenment has been forked. The new product is called Moksha (Sanscrit: "emancipation, freedom") and is based not on the newest version of Enlightenment, E19, but rather an older version, E17. Behind Moksha is Jeff Hoogland and the folks at Bodhi Linux, who got frustrated with the turn that Enlightenment development has taken, and believe Moksha will be the path that takes the useful, stable release of E17 and makes it into something better. From Hoogland's blog:

There's a vulnerability in Master Lock branded combination padlocks that allows anyone to learn the combination in eight or fewer tries, a process that requires less than two minutes and a minimal amount of skill to carry out.

ConnochaetOS, a Slackware- and Salix OS-based GNU/Linux Distribution, has announced a Release Candidate 2 for its version 14.1 after a several year hiatus.

All 50 state attorney generals, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Federal Communications Commission, reached settlements with Sprint and Verizon Wireless that include $158 million in payments to resolve allegations that Sprint and Verizon placed unauthorized, third-party charges on consumers' mobile telephone bills, a practice known as "cramming."

It turns out that Microsoft not only has the power to ban you from Xbox Live permanently, but it can also temporarily make your Xbox One totally unusable, as the beta testers behind the Gears of War Remastered leak have found out. If you didn’t think Microsoft had this power, you’re not alone.

Self-driving cars have become a frequent topic for auto executives as the technology for the vehicles emerges. The market for autonomous technology will grow to $42 billion by 2025 and self-driving cars may account for a quarter of global auto sales by 2035, according to Boston Consulting Group. By 2017, partially autonomous vehicles will become available in “large numbers,” the firm said in a report in April.

Reinventing the acoustic coupled modem of the 1970s, Google engineers have found a way for computers to share data through their speakers. Dubbed Tone, the Chrome app broadcasts the URL of the current tab to any machine within earshot that also has the extension installed. The extension is available now in Chrome's web store. "Tone grew out of the idea that while digital communication methods like email and chat have made it infinitely easier, cheaper, and faster to share things with people across the globe, they've actually made it more complicated to share things with the people standing right next to you. Tone aims to make sharing digital things with nearby people as easy as talking to them," Kauffman and Smus said in a blog post.

Security researchers have discovered millions of PCs have Computrace software enabled. This software is enabled in the BIOS by default. It allows for a Windows PC to be taken over remotely. Computrace does not enforce encryption when it communicates and it does not verify the identity of the remote server from which it receives commands. Most users are not even aware that this software is installed and enabled in their BIOS.

Britons may soon face identity checks to access adult material on the internet, according to discussions between Whitehall and the private sector. “Nobody in the UK wants a centralised identity database,” so a new scheme proposed by the pornography industry would see adult sites verifying visitors’ identity through banks, credit reference agencies or even the NHS. It comes ahead of an expected new law demanding age checks for online pornography and threatening a block on any sites which don’t comply. It is a key Conservative pledge and has widespread support. But critics say the plans are a privacy nightmare, and warn they will require Chinese-style “draconian” levels of internet censorship.

When a group of modern humans began their exodus out of Africa, Egypt may have been the last stop. Genetic similarities between Egyptians and Eurasians suggests that Pleistocene emigrants traveled through Egypt. If the route to Eurasia passed through East Africa, Ethiopians should be more genetically similar to Eurasians than Egyptians are. But according to Pagani, the opposite is true.

Call it a Roomba for the ocean. The non-profit Ocean Cleanup has come up with an invention to help the Pacific Ocean rid itself of some of the 8 million tons of plastics. The plan is to set up enormous floating barriers in rotating tidal locations around the globe (called gyres), and let the plastics naturally flow into the "corrals," reports Gizmodo.