Proof Daylight Saving Time Is Dumb, Dangerous, and Costly

From a report on Bloomberg: The case for daylight saving time has been shaky for a while. The biannual time change was originally implemented to save energy. Yet dozens of studies around the world have found that changing the clocks has either minuscule or non-existent effects on energy use. The latest research suggests the time change can be harmful to our health and cost us money. The suffering of the spring time change begins with the loss of an hour of sleep. That might not seem like a big deal, but researchers have found it can be dangerous to mess with sleep schedules. Car accidents, strokes, and heart attacks spike in the days after the March time change. It turns out that judges, sleep deprived by daylight saving, impose harsher sentences. Some of the last defenders of daylight saving time have been a cluster of business groups who assume the change helps stimulate consumer spending. That’s not true either, according to recent analysis of 380 million bank and credit-card transactions by the JPMorgan Chase Institute. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Proof Daylight Saving Time Is Dumb, Dangerous, and Costly

Amazon Outage Cost S&P 500 Companies $150M

From a report on Axios: Cyence, an economic modeling platform, shared some data with Axios that show the ramifications: Losses of $150 million for S&P 500 companies. Losses of $160 million for U.S. financial services companies using the infrastructure. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon Outage Cost S&P 500 Companies $150M

‘Rogue’ Algorithm Blamed for Historic Crash of the British Pound

The British pound suffered a “flash crash” earlier this morning in which it plummeted six percent against the US dollar within a matter of minutes. All signs point to high frequency stock trading as the culprit—and possibly a single algorithm. Read more…

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‘Rogue’ Algorithm Blamed for Historic Crash of the British Pound

Programming Bug Costs Citigroup $7M After Legit Transactions Mistaken For Test Data For 15 Years

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Register:A programming blunder in its reporting software has led to Citigroup being fined $7m. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that error [PDF] resulted in the financial regulator being sent incomplete “blue sheet” information for a remarkable 15 years — from May 1999 to April 2014. The mistake was discovered by Citigroup itself when it was asked to send a large but precise chunk of trading data to the SEC in April 2014 and asked its technical support team to help identify which internal ID numbers they should run a request on. That team quickly noticed that some branches’ trades were not being included in the automated system and alerted those above them. Four days later a patch was in place, but it wasn’t until eight months later that the company received a formal report noting that the error had affected SEC reports going back more than a decade. The next month, January 2015, Citigroup fessed up to the SEC.The glitch resided in new alphanumeric branch codes that the bank had introduced in the mid-1990s. The program code filtered out any transactions that were given three-digit branch codes from 089 to 100 and used those prefixes for testing purposes. The report adds, “But in 1998, the company started using alphanumeric branch codes as it expanded its business. Among them were the codes 10B, 10C and so on, which the system treated as being within the excluded range, and so their transactions were removed from any reports sent to the SEC.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Programming Bug Costs Citigroup $7M After Legit Transactions Mistaken For Test Data For 15 Years

A New Bill Wants to Put an End to Ridiculous Airline Fees

Airlines make a killing by charging fees for everything from checked bags to seat changes. A new bill—The Forbidding Airlines from Imposing Ridiculous (FAIR) Fees Act—aims to keep these fees in check. Read more…

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A New Bill Wants to Put an End to Ridiculous Airline Fees

MST3K Breaks Kickstarter Record

the_Bionic_lemming writes: Raising over 6.3 million dollars in just one month MST3K fans helped push the new 14 episode series past the Official Kickstarter Veronica Mars total of $5, 702, 153 by raising $5, 764, 229 On Kickstarter. $600, 000 + Was added to the total from the Add on store at MST3K.com . And what’s more, they did it with only 48, 270 backers compared to 91, 585 Veronica Mars backers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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MST3K Breaks Kickstarter Record

The Czur Scanner Can Build A Digital Library Five Minutes At A Time

 When the Visigoths burned Library Of Alexandria you can bet that old Ptolemy I Soter would have loved to have had a Czur (pronounced “Cesar”) scanner in his palatial marble-clad staterooms. The Czur is basically a book scanner on steroids that allows you to scan a 300-page book – or priceless scroll of ancient knowledge – in about five minutes. The Czur is a sort of… Read More

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The Czur Scanner Can Build A Digital Library Five Minutes At A Time

Voyo Connects Your Car To The Cloud

 Now that connected car startups are now thick on the ground, it takes a special amount of pizzaz to stand out. Thankfully Voyo has amped up the jazz hands and is producing a small device that can truly change the way we drive. What does this little dongle do? It can interface with your car’s computer system via the OBD-II as well as via your relay panel. By connecting these two port… Read More

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Voyo Connects Your Car To The Cloud

Voltera, The Electronics Printer, Launches To Much Fanfare

 One of our absolute favorites from the Hardware Battlefield just launched on Kickstarter and they are, if you’ll excuse the cliché, crushing it. The company appeared on our stage at CES 2015 and showed of an early working prototype. Now, however, they’re ready to take orders and start shipping. The printer is essentially a PCB maker. You put in a board, upload a circuit diagram, … Read More

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Voltera, The Electronics Printer, Launches To Much Fanfare