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Data Show Gender Pay Gap Opens Early

The data, which cover about 1.7 million graduates, showed that median pay for men exceeded that for women three years after graduation in nearly 75% of roughly 11,300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs at some 2,000 universities. In almost half of the programs, male graduates’ median earnings topped women’s by 10% or more, a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from 2015 and 2016 graduates showed.

#business #education #sexism

Boffins rate npm and PyPI package security and it's not good

Very bad news, but not really much of a surprise.

#cybersecurity #maliciouspackages

In praise of mischievous people. Their wit and light-heartedness make the world a better, more amusing place

Mischief is essentially a form of misbehaviour, and its practitioners are generally met with punishment and reproach rather than praise, at least when they are caught. Why is it, then, that tales of mischief so often elicit in us such a positive response? Could it be that there is something virtuous about mischief, and something noble about mischievous people, considered as a type?

Deploying disaster-proof apps may be easier than you think

“There's still a lack of clarity about who takes ownership of the resiliency issue when it comes to cloud,” he explained, adding that while the public cloud providers offer many tools for building resilient applications, the onus is on the user to implement them.

An analysis of these tools showed that achieving high degrees of resiliency was a relatively straightforward prospect – especially when the cost of lost business and cloud SLAs were taken into consideration.

#cloud_computing

You may not be interested in Clarence Thomas, but Clarence Thomas is interested in you

In the face of a state that won’t do anything about climate change, economic inequality, personal debt, voting rights, and women’s rights, it’s no wonder that an increasing portion of the population, across all races, genders, and beliefs, have determined that the best way to protect themselves, and their families, is by getting a gun. A society with no rights, no freedoms, except for those you claim yourself—this was always Thomas’s vision of the world. Now, for many Americans, it is the only one available.

#us_politics #scotus

What to do about climate change (1): Not too late

It doesn’t make for joyful reading, yet most of what I describe that made my colleagues gloomy was merely factual. The facts simply show that matters are very bad and the situation urgent

#climate

Democide: An Inside Job?

Chou points to two different categories of democide: when a “democracy boldly sanctions critical affronts to its current course,” and “situations where a democracy incrementally elects to limit the democratic rights and freedoms available to its citizens in order to safeguard itself from popular threats.” Both “too much democracy” and “too little democracy” have the potential to kill it off.

Expanding a notion from political theorist Nathalie Karagiannis, that “democracy is a tragic regime,” Chou argues that there is “no effective mechanism in a democracy which can prevent that democracy from paving the way for its antitheses, that is, without itself being a risk to democracy.”

#political_science

‘One wave after another’: Brigham and Women’s doctor predicts the foreseeable future for COVID

Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, said in an interview with Black Iowa News that there will be “surges of new variants for the foreseeable future.”

“But the meaning of those waves has changed, and this is why I want to make sure that people don’t get discouraged,” Faust said. “It’s bad that BA.5 is here and is causing cases and hospitalizations. But it’s not like 2020, where every single patient that I treat has terrible pneumonia and is starving for oxygen and is going to be on a ventilator.”

#medicine #covid19

What If the War in Ukraine Spins Out of Control?

In their adherence to invisible rules, Putin and Biden have recaptured an important Cold War dynamic. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the United States and the Soviet Union never formally agreed on how to fight proxy wars. Neither side, for instance, established ground rules for the Korean War—the first hot conflict of the Cold War era. Instead, over nearly four decades, both sides improvised their way to a sustainable way of doing business. There was the permissible: mutual denunciation, cultural and ideological competition, espionage, active measures such as propaganda and disinformation campaigns, the pursuit of spheres of influence, interference in the domestic politics of other countries, and support for the other’s adversaries in peace and war (usually sweetened by degrees of plausible deniability). And there was the impermissible: direct military clashes and the use of nuclear weapons.

#foreignpolicy #geopolitics #military #politicalscience

Why Elon Musk can’t get out of Twitter deal even if his lenders bail

When Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter in April for $44 billion, he had a pitch to make the company better by adding new features, fending off spam bots and being more transparent about its algorithms. He won support from a consortium of banks who agreed to loan him more than half the total deal price to take over the company.

But now Musk wants out, blaming Twitter for not giving him more information and what he sees as the company’s dimming business prospects. Twitter is suing him to close the deal, saying his reasons for stepping away are excuses to get out of a financial commitment that he no longer wants to honor. His financial backers, meanwhile, are stuck.

#twitter #social_media #business #law #tech

Research underway to find Gaspee shipwreck — and Rhode Island’s claim to the start of the Revolution – The Boston Globe

But Gaspee proponents, like McNamara, say the search for Gaspee has ginned up more interest than the search for Endeavour in Newport Harbor. And diving into Rhode Island history beats talking about more modern problems.“This is a lot better than talking about how much the price of calzones has gone up,” McNamara said.

#rhode_island #history

Smart thermostat swarms are straining the US grid

“As we electrify the heating sector to decarbonize the grid, this so-called load synchronization will become a problem in the near future,” Zhang said.

America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good

When we think about the United States, we make the essential error of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of Red and Blue people … But in truth, we have never been one nation. We are more like a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographic and historical reality.

This doesn’t mean we will have another civil war, exactly but it does mean that the pressure on national cohesion will continue to increase.

#economy #foreignpolicy #politicalscience #politics

People who regularly talk to AI chatbots often start to believe they're sentient, says CEO

“We're not talking about crazy people or people who are hallucinating or having delusions,” the company's founder and CEO, Eugenia Kuyda, told Reuters. “They talk to AI and that's the experience they have.”

#executivementions #artificialintelligence #business #tech

Imagine that your job is to preserve every word and make it tell a story. Meet the lexicographers behind the OED

The English language evolves at such a pace that, for the OED lexicographers, the goalposts aren’t so much shifting as sprinting away from them. Once a word has gained its place, it may be moved – for example, to be listed as a variant spelling – but it is never taken out, meaning that the dictionary only ever expands. (This is true even of mistakes. The word “astirbroad” was added in 1885, but when an editor came to revise it in 2019, they discovered that it was an early-modern typo: the typesetter for the 17th-century book in which the word was originally found had dropped the word “stir” into “abroad”. Still, astirbroad remains.) Nor is the OED limited to British English: the dictionary includes varieties spoken outside the UK – what its editors refer to as “World Englishes” – from Singapore to Jamaica.

#oed #language #english

The perfect crime – undone by the perfect email backups

“You mean,” came the horrified question, “when we press delete, the emails don't actually delete, they get saved to backup tape?”

Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

Salesforce is no stranger to the debate, having cancelled the lease on an unbuilt 325,000 square foot (30,193sqm) tower. Last year, Brent Hyder, Salesforce president and chief people officer, said that “the employee experience is about more than ping-pong tables and snacks” as he announced an end to the assumption that most staff would work from the office, and introduced a flexible working plan.

This week CEO Marc Benioff has gone further, saying an enforced return to the old normal won't be successful.

#business #work

The Rabbit Died

The scientists have said to prepare for another Covid Winter. Listen to them.

#covid19

The Controversial Economics of Abortion Law

Competing views on the economics of abortion were a part of the Court’s considerations. A group of 240 female researchers who oppose abortion filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that abortion access had set women back after Roe. Legalization, they argued, coincided with more women falling into poverty, women reporting lower levels of happiness in surveys and fewer women saying they were in satisfying long-term relationships.

An opposing group of 154 economists, led by Prof. Myers, filed their own amicus brief in response, pointing to “a substantial body of well-developed and credible research” that contradicted the anti-abortion brief. They argued that in giving women more control over their childbearing preferences, abortion legalization led to a range of social and economic benefits for women, particularly related to education and work.

Research on these questions hinges on the fact that a number of states legalized abortion before the Supreme Court did so nationally with its 1973 decision in Roe. Economists saw an opportunity to examine the economic and social effects of abortion access by looking at the states that had legalized abortion by 1970—Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York and Washington—and several others that had liberalized restrictions. By comparing them to states that legalized later, they had a natural experiment.

#uspol #abortion #economics

Introduction: The Questions of Minimal Computing

Broadly speaking, minimal computing connotes digital humanities work undertaken in the context of some set of constraints. This could include lack of access to hardware or software, network capacity, technical education, or even a reliable power grid.

#digitalhumanities

Government Watchdogs Attack Medicare Advantage for Denying Care and Overcharging

Congress should crack down on Medicare Advantage health plans for seniors that sometimes deny patients vital medical care while overcharging the government billions of dollars every year, government watchdogs told a House panel Tuesday.

#uspol #healthcare

Samsung accused of cheating on hardware benchmarks ... again

#samsung #televisions

“Not that we cheated or anything, but we want to make it clear that we're totally allowed to cheat.”

An algorithm to detect and hoodwink benchmarking software is just what Samsung was accused of employing in those earlier examples. The chaebol never denied or admitted any wrongdoing, instead arguing it wasn't obligated to tell consumers if its devices included code that allowed it to best benchmarks.

Google sidelines engineer who claims its AI is sentient

#ai #google

Lemoine, a military veteran who has described himself as a priest, an ex-convict and an AI researcher, told Google executives as senior as Kent Walker, president of global affairs, that he believed LaMDA was a child age 7 or 8. He wanted the company to seek the computer program’s consent before running experiments on it. His claims were founded on his religious beliefs, which he said the company’s human resources department discriminated against.

“They have repeatedly questioned my sanity,” Lemoine said. “They said, ‘Have you been checked out by a psychiatrist recently?’” In the months before he was placed on administrative leave, the company had suggested he take a mental health leave.

Geico facing payout to woman who got HPV after sex in car

#insurance

In February 2021, M.O. notified Geico she planned to seek a $1 million insurance settlement against the man. She argued the man’s auto insurance provided coverage for her injuries and losses.

The insurance company refused the settlement offer, saying the woman’s claim did not occur because of normal use of the vehicle, according to court documents.

In-utero COVID exposure tied to language, motor delays by 1 year

#covid #longcovid

The study authors cautioned that larger follow-up studies on the potential link between infected mothers and infant neurodevelopmental delays are needed. “Whether a definitive connection exists between prenatal SARS-CoV-2 exposure and adverse neurodevelopment in offspring is not yet known, in part because children born to women infected in the first wave of the pandemic are younger than 2 years of age,” they wrote.

Insurance Ban on Russian Tankers Could Help Cut Moscow's Energy Revenues

#insurance #russia

The U.S. has already outlawed imports of Russian oil and the European Union has agreed to prohibit seaborne imports of Russian crude in six months. On top of that, the bloc has worked toward coordinating with some Group of Seven members on a ban on the insurance services needed to ship Russian oil anywhere in the world.

Perhaps the Only Thing Worthy of Veneration: Brevity

#usconstitution #uspol

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but you won’t find much wit in the American Constitution. The longer the document endures, the clunkier many of its qualities appear to contemporary readers: no direct election of the president, unbearably high amendment procedures, no mention of judicial strike down power for Acts of Congress, and no explicit acknowledgement of major constitutional principles such as democracy, the rule of law, or the separation of powers....

And while new Supreme Court appointments often turn into a constitutional lovefest, many contemporary constitutional scholars harbor a growing tide of resentment against the American Constitution…and for good reason: its faults are many, not least when it comes to its democratic nature.

Some Ads Play on Streaming Services Even When the TV Is Off, Study Finds

#advertising #business

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”

Some 17% of ads shown on televisions connected through a streaming device—including streaming boxes, dongles, sticks and gaming consoles—are playing while the TV is off, according to a study by WPP PLC’s ad-buying giant GroupM and ad-measurement firm iSpot.tv Inc.

That is because when a TV set is turned off, it doesn’t always send a signal to the streaming device connected to the TV through its HDMI port, GroupM said. As a result, the streaming device will continue playing the show and its ads unless users had exited or paused the streaming app they were watching before turning off their TV.

IBM ordered to hand over ex-CEO emails plotting cuts in older workers

#discrimination #ibm #aging

In one of the many ongoing age discrimination lawsuits against IBM, Big Blue has been ordered to produce internal emails in which former CEO Ginny Rometty and former SVP of Human Resources Diane Gherson discuss efforts to get rid of older employees.

When Egypt was Black

#history #race

The war had brought the global color line—long recognized by African Americans like W.E.B. Du Bois—into the backyard of Egyptian nationalists. But rather than develop this insight into solidarity, as Du Bois did in his June 1919 article on the pan-Africanist dimensions of the Egyptian revolution for NAACP journal The Crisis, Egyptian nationalists criticized the British for a perceived mis-racialization of Egyptians as “men of color.”...

Pharaonism, a mode of national identification linking people living in Egypt today with the ancient pharaohs, emerged in this context as a kind of alternative to British efforts at racializing Egyptians as people of color.... Pharaonism positioned rural-to-urban migrants in the professional middle classes as “real Egyptians” who were biological heirs to an ancient civilization, superior to Black Africans and not deserving of political subordination to white supremacy.