Discord Store To Offer Developers 90 Percent of Game Revenues Slashdotby BeauHD on software at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 14, 2018, 11:35 pm)

DarkRookie2 shares a report from Ars Technica: Discord has announced that it will start taking a reduced, 10-percent cut from game revenues generated on its online store starting next year, one-upping the Epic Games Store and its recently announced 12-percent cut on the Epic Games Store. The move comes alongside a coming expansion of the Discord Games Store, which launched earlier this year with a tightly curated selection of games that now includes roughly 100 titles. The coming "self-serve publishing platform" will allow developers "no matter what size, from AAA to single-person teams" to access the Discord Store and the new 90-percent revenue share. "We talked to a lot of developers, and many of them feel that current stores are not earning their 30% of the usual 70/30 revenue share," Discord writes in the announcement. "Because of this, we now see developers creating their own stores and launchers to distribute their games instead of focusing on what's really important --making great games and cultivating amazing communities." "Turns out, it does not cost 30% to distribute games in 2018," the announcement continues. "After doing some research, we discovered that we can build amazing developer tools, run them, and give developers the majority of the revenue share."

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What Are Silicon Valley's Highest-Paying Tech Jobs? Slashdotby msmash on business at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 14, 2018, 11:05 pm)

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).

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First clashes hit Yemen's Hodeidah since truce deal: residents AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 14, 2018, 11:00 pm)

Clashes break out in the Red Sea port city a day after a UN-brokered truce was reached by the warring parties.
'MPs don't know what they want to do': Q&A on UK's Brexit crisis AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 14, 2018, 11:00 pm)

As a tumultuous week in British politics draws to a close, Brexit expert Anand Menon discusses what might happen next.
Regular Windows 10 Users Who Manually Look For Updates May End Up Downloading Beta C Slashdotby msmash on windows at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 14, 2018, 10:05 pm)

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.

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Boeing 737 Passenger Jet Damaged in Possible Midair Drone Hit Slashdotby msmash on transportation at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 14, 2018, 9:35 pm)

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.

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J&J stocks plunge after report says firm knew about asbestos AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 14, 2018, 9:00 pm)

Reuters report says Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that cancer-causing asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder.
In Booming Job Market, Workers Are 'Ghosting' Their Employers Slashdotby msmash on business at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 14, 2018, 8:35 pm)

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.

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A New Engine Could Bring Back Supersonic Air-Travel Slashdotby msmash on transportation at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 14, 2018, 8:05 pm)

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.

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UN monitors needed to observe Yemen ceasefire, UN envoy says AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 14, 2018, 8:00 pm)

Special Envoy Griffiths called for a robust truce monitoring system to oversee compliance with the ceasefire in Hodeidah
Statue of 'racist' Gandhi removed from Ghana university campus AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 14, 2018, 8:00 pm)

A petition for the statue's removal cited Gandhi's writings calling Indians 'infinitely superior' to black Africans.
Facebook Says A Bug May Have Exposed The Unposted Photos Of Millions Of Users Slashdotby msmash on facebook at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 14, 2018, 7:35 pm)

A day after hosting a pop-up store in New York City's Bryant Park to explain how privacy is the "foundation of the company," Facebook disclosed that a security flaw potentially exposed the public and private photos of as many as 6.8 million users to developers. From a report: On Friday, the Menlo Park, California-based company said in a blog post that it discovered a bug in late September that gave third-party developers the ability to access users' photos, including those that had been uploaded to Facebook's servers but not publicly shared on any of its services. The security flaw, which exposed photos for 12 days between Sept. 13 and Sept. 25, affected up to 1,500 apps from 876 developers, according to Facebook. "We're sorry this happened," Facebook said in the post. "Early next week we will be rolling out tools for app developers that will allow them to determine which people using their app might be impacted by this bug. We will be working with those developers to delete the photos from impacted users." Facebook has not yet responded to questions about whether company representatives staffing its privacy pop-ups yesterday were aware of this security flaw as they were meeting with reporters and customers to discuss privacy.

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Hiding in Plain Sight: The YouTubers' Crowdfunding Piracy Slashdotby msmash on piracy at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at December 14, 2018, 7:05 pm)

Some YouTube channels are publishing full-length episodes of TV shows, rights of which they obviously do not own, and on top of this, they are trying to crowdfund their piracy efforts by asking viewers to donate some cash. From a report: YouTube creators asking for money is nothing new, be it through the site's built-in membership features or third-party services such as Patreon. But trying to profit off someone else's intellectual property isn't the same as asking for support on an original video they've created. The person who runs the Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell's Kitchen channel did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Engadget, but their Patreon page (named YoIUploadShows) isn't coy. "Hey! It's not as easy as you might think to make my content, I have to look for the best quality episodes I can find, download them, convert them, edit them, render them and upload them," YoIUploadShows' Patreon page reads. "This can sometimes take at least a few hours. Especially because the downloads are usually slow and the rendering itself can take a couple hours, because I started making all my uploads in HD instead of 480p to give them a little extra clarity." It's not easy, folks, so for that he or she "would really appreciate the extra support if you have any money to spare :)"

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Five things we can do to combat climate change AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 14, 2018, 7:00 pm)

Climate scientists say if we don't act there will be irreversible damage to our planet within decades, so here are five ways we can change our own lives to help create change.
Palestinian teen killed by Israeli forces during Ramallah protest AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at December 14, 2018, 7:00 pm)

Mahmoud Nakhleh, 18, was shot in the abdomen during a protest against the Israeli army in the al-Jalazun refugee camp.