Author: kenmay

US Gained a Decade of Flynn-Effect IQ Points After Adding Iodine To Salt

cold fjord writes “I wish it was always this easy. Business Insider reports, ‘Iodized salt is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it. Few people know why it even exists. Iodine deficiency remains the world’s leading cause of preventable mental retardation. According to a new study (abstract), its introduction in America in 1924 had an effect so profound that it raised the country’s IQ. A new NBER working paper from James Feyrer, Dimitra Politi, and David N. Weil finds that the population in iodine-deficient areas saw IQs rise by a full standard deviation, which is 15 points, after iodized salt was introduced…. The mental impacts were unknown, the program was started to fight goiter, so these effects were an extremely fortunate, unintended side effect.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continued here:
US Gained a Decade of Flynn-Effect IQ Points After Adding Iodine To Salt

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Released With Major New Features

An anonymous reader writes “Still the most popular open source office suite, Apache OpenOffice 4 has been released, with many new enhancements and a new sidebar, based on IBM Symphony’s implementation but with many improvements. The code still has comments in German but as long as real new features keep coming and can be shared with other office suites no one is complaining.” The sidebar mentioned brings frequently used controls down and beside the actual area of a word-processing doc, say, which makes some sense given how wide many displays have become. This release comes with some major improvements to graphics handling, too; anti-aliasing makes for smoother bitmaps. In conjunction with this release, SourceForge (also under the Slashdot Media umbrella) has announced the launch of an extensions collection for OO. Extensions mean that Open Office can gain capabilities from outside contributors, rather than being wrapped up in large, all-or-nothing updates. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Visit site:
Apache OpenOffice 4.0 Released With Major New Features

Texas man raised over $4.5M in Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, feds allege

If you don’t follow the often-shady world of Bitcoin , you may not be familiar with Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BTCST), a virtual bitcoin-based hedge fund that many suspected of being a scam. BTCST shut down in August 2012, and on Wednesday the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) formally charged its founder, Trendon Shavers, with running a Ponzi scheme. In a statement , the SEC said Shavers “raised at least 700, 000 Bitcoin in BTCST investments, which amounted to more than $4.5 million based on the average price of Bitcoin in 2011 and 2012 when the investments were offered and sold.” The government’s financial regulator alleges that Shavers violated a number of federal financial regulations. In court documents , the SEC wrote: Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

More:
Texas man raised over $4.5M in Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, feds allege

Intel previews 4.5W Y-series Core chips for fanless tablets

Intel teased us with the prospect of a fanless Haswell chip back at Computex , but it didn’t say just how it would achieve such a feat. Now we know: it’s introducing more energy-efficient versions of the Y-series Core processors that were announced earlier this year. The new chips consume as little as 4.5W in a typical scenario, letting them run in tablets and detachable convertibles without the fans needed by their 6W peers. Don’t expect blistering performance at this reduced power level, however. While Intel isn’t divulging clock speeds just yet, the 4.5W Y-series chips have the same 11.5W thermal design power rating as their 6W siblings — they’ll still need active cooling to perform at their best. The company also isn’t providing ship dates or naming customers, although it does promise that the extra-miserly Core CPUs should be available in the “coming months.” We have an idea as to who might be interested. Filed under: Laptops , Tablets , Intel Comments Source: Intel

Read More:
Intel previews 4.5W Y-series Core chips for fanless tablets

This 97-Year-Old Makes Amazing Art Exclusively With Microsoft Paint

A great artist can make beauty out of any medium, no matter how limited. 97-year-old Hal Lasko embodies this concept. Instead of painting with dozens of expensive brushes or high-end software suites, Lasko uses a tool most of us have used and abandoned years ago—Microsoft Paint from Windows 95. Read more…        

View post:
This 97-Year-Old Makes Amazing Art Exclusively With Microsoft Paint

The Days of Door-to-Door Mail Delivery Could Be Numbered

Every day, millions of people enjoy the simple luxury of a blue and grey-clad letter carrier showing up at their house and dropping the day’s mail on their doorstep. But if some Republican lawmakers get their way, this luxury may be short-lived. Read more…        

Continue Reading:
The Days of Door-to-Door Mail Delivery Could Be Numbered

NSA says it can’t search its own e-mails

The National Security Agency (NSA) is a ” supercomputing powerhouse ” with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture. But ask the NSA as part of a freedom of information request to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees’ e-mail? The agency says it doesn’t have the technology. “There’s no central method to search an e-mail at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately, ” NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week. The system is “a little antiquated and archaic, ” she added. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

See more here:
NSA says it can’t search its own e-mails