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Last updated 14 Dec, 09:50 PM
BBC News - Home
Brexit: More assurances for MPs possible says May - Theresa May is seeking "further clarification" to satisfy MPs after "robust" exchange with EU chief.
Brexit: No visa but Britons will pay €7 to travel to EU countries - Britons will not need a visa but will have to apply for a travel document, which lasts for three years.
Eleven die and dozens ill after eating rice at Indian temple - Witnesses say people fell ill after eating rice following a ceremony in the state of Karnataka.
Were Taylor Swift fans tracked at her gig? - A stadium in LA confirms it uses facial recognition technology at pop concerts.
Hastings cliff fall: Rock crashes into bedroom - Rocks weighing several tons fell onto a building on White Rock, in Hastings, destroying a bedroom.
The Register
One year on after US repealed net neutrality, policymakers reflect soberly on the future - Don't be daft, of course they haven't, we're still in Crazytown One year ago today, the FCC passed a controversial measure that undermined its own rules, passed just two years earlier, over net neutrality.…
Stop us if you've heard this one: Facebook apologizes for bug leaking private photos - Data gathering biz still having trouble keeping data secure Facebook on Friday apologized for a bug that may have exposed exposed private photos to third-party apps for the 12 day period from September 13 to September 25, 2018.…
Fed up with Oracle's Sith, AWS wades into Big Red's lawsuit over Pentagon JEDI contract - Long-standing cloud enemies to do battle in the courts AWS has intervened in Oracle's lawsuit against the Pentagon's plans to award a $10bn cloud contract to a single vendor.…
Hot on heels of 2.0, Vivaldi 2.2 adds tab session management among other goodies - But built-in email and mobile clients still works in progress Only months after reaching the 2.0 milestone, the independent Chromium-based browser Vivaldi has added a bunch of useful features.…
ZipRecruiter has been flying low: User email addresses exposed to unauthorised accounts - Looking for work? Spammers could well be looking for you Tinder for job-seekers ZipRecruiter has copped to a data breach after the names and email addresses of job-seekers were flung to the wind in a permissions screw-up.…
New Scientist - News
Coal power emissions in the US are even higher than we thought - The carbon emissions from lugging coal around can be much higher than thought - up to a third as much as is emitted when the stuff is burned
Breathing in moon dust could release toxins in astronauts’ lungs - We already knew that lunar dust is highly abrasive, but now it seems minerals in the dust can easily react with human cells and release large amount of toxins
Incredible shrinking 3D printer can make really tiny objects - A method for 3D printing minuscule objects produces them at a larger size and then shrinks them to one thousandth of the original volume
Can a Green New Deal boost the US economy and save the planet? - Politicians like the newly-elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are now taking climate change seriously, but even an ambitious plan to remake the economy may not be enough
Virgin Galactic claims its first successful flight to edge of space - Richard Branson's space tourism firm says it has finally made a flight to the edge of space - though the craft did not reach the currently accepted definition of 100 kilometres up
Hacker News
CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to - Comments
Experts Urge U.S. To Continue Support for Nuclear Fusion Research - Comments
UCLA to faculty: consider refusing reviews for Elsevier, go open access instead - Comments
China’s Economy Slows Sharply - Comments
Turtletoy - Comments
Slashdot
What Are Silicon Valley's Highest-Paying Tech Jobs? - An anonymous reader writes: Job-search site Indeed crunched its Silicon Valley hiring numbers for 2018, looking at tech job searches, salaries, and employers, and found that engineers who combine tech skills with business skills as directors of product management earn the most, with an average salary of US $186,766. Last year, the gig came in as number two, at $173,556. Also climbing up the ranks, and now in the number two spot with an average annual salary of $181,100, is senior reliability engineer. Application security engineer is third at $173,903. Neither made the top 20 in 2017. And while it seems that machine learning engineers have been getting all the love in 2018, those jobs came in eighth place, at $159,230. That's still a bit of a leap from last year, when the job made its first appearance on Indeed's top 20 highest-paying jobs in the 13th spot at $149,519. This year's top 20 is below; last year's numbers are here. Further reading: 'Blockchain Developer' is the Fastest-Growing US Job (LinkedIn study). Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Regular Windows 10 Users Who Manually Look For Updates May End Up Downloading Beta Code, Microsoft Says - In addition to relying on Windows Insiders, employees, and willing participants for testing updates, Microsoft is pushing patches before they are known to be stable to regular users too if they opt to click the "check for updates" button on their own, the company said. From a report: In a blog post by Michael Fortin, Corporate Vice President for Windows, it is made clear that home users are intentionally being given updates that are not necessarily ready for deployment. Many power users are familiar with Patch Tuesday. On the second Tuesday of each month, Microsoft pushes out a batch of updates at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time on this day containing security fixes, bug patches, and other non-security fixes. Updates pushed out as part of Patch Tuesday are known as "B" release since it happens during the second week of the month. During the third and fourth weeks of the month are where things begin to get murky. Microsoft's "C" and "D" releases are considered previews for commercial customers and power users. No security fixes are a part of these updates, but for good reasoning. Microsoft has come out to directly say that some users are the guinea pigs for everyone else. In some fairness to Microsoft, C and D updates are typically only applied when a user manually checks for updates by clicking the button buried within Settings. However, if end users really wanted to be a part of testing the latest features, the Windows Insider Program is designed exactly for that purpose. Further reading: Windows 10's 'Check for updates' button may download beta code. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Boeing 737 Passenger Jet Damaged in Possible Midair Drone Hit - Grupo Aeromexico SAB is investigating whether a drone slammed into a Boeing Co. 737 jetliner as the aircraft approached its destination in Tijuana, Mexico, on the U.S. border. From a report: Images on local media showed considerable damage to the nose of the 737-800, which was operating Wednesday as Flight 773 from Guadalajara. In a cabin recording, crew members can be heard saying they heard a "pretty loud bang" and asking the control tower to check if the nose was damaged. The collision happened shortly before landing. "The exact cause is still being investigated," Aeromexico said in a statement. "The aircraft landed normally and the passengers' safety was never compromised." The potential drone strike stoked fears that the rising use of uncrewed aircraft will endanger planes filled with passengers. While most nations prohibit drones from flying in pathways reserved for airliners, the millions of small consumer devices that have been purchased around the world can't be tracked on radar, making it difficult for authorities to enforce the rules. In addition, many users don't know the rules or don't follow them. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In Booming Job Market, Workers Are 'Ghosting' Their Employers - A notorious millennial dating practice is starting to creep into the workplace: ghosting. Employers are noticing with increasing frequency that workers are leaving their jobs by simply not showing up and cutting off contact with their companies [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; syndicated source]. From a report: "A number of contacts said that they had been 'ghosted,' a situation in which a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact," the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in December's Beige Book, which tracks employment trends. National data on economic "ghosting" is lacking. The term, which usually applies to dating, first surfaced in 2016 on Dictionary.com. But companies across the country say silent exits are on the rise. Analysts blame America's increasingly tight labor market. Job openings have surpassed the number of seekers for eight straight months, and the unemployment rate has clung to a 49-year low of 3.7 percent since September. Janitors, baristas, welders, accountants, engineers -- they're all in demand, said Michael Hicks, a labor economist at Ball State University in Indiana. More people may opt to skip tough conversations and slide right into the next thing. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A New Engine Could Bring Back Supersonic Air-Travel - An anonymous reader shares a report (may be paywalled): Every morning, time once was, a giant roar from Heathrow Airport would announce the departure of flight BA001 to New York. The roar was caused by the injection into the aircraft's four afterburners of the fuel which provided the extra thrust that it needed to take off. Soon afterwards, the pilot lit the afterburners again -- this time to accelerate his charge beyond the speed of sound for the three-and-a-half hour trip to JFK. The plane was Concorde. Supersonic passenger travel came to an end in 2003. The crash three years earlier of a French Concorde had not helped, but the main reasons were wider. One was the aircraft's Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus engines, afterburners and all, which gobbled up too much fuel for its flights to be paying propositions. The second was the boom-causing shock wave it generated when travelling supersonically. That meant the overland sections of its route had to be flown below Mach 1. For the Olympus, an engine optimised for travel far beyond the sound barrier, this was commercial death. That, however, was then. And this is now. Materials are lighter and stronger. Aerodynamics and the physics of sonic booms are better understood. There is also a more realistic appreciation of the market. As a result, several groups of aircraft engineers are dipping their toes back into the supersonic pool. Some see potential for planes with about half Concorde's 100-seat capacity. Others plan to start even smaller, with business jets that carry around a dozen passengers. The chances of such aircraft getting airborne have recently increased substantially. Read more of this story at Slashdot.