UN in 'intense negotiations' to avert attack on Hudeida AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at June 11, 2018, 11:30 pm)

Secretary General Antonio Guterres says he hopes the battle for Hudeida, where Yemen's main port lies, can be avoided.
Eugenie Brazier: Why Google honours her today AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at June 11, 2018, 11:30 pm)

Hailed for her fresh, simple cuisine, Eugenie Brazier would have been celebrating her birthday on June 12.
A Serious New Hurdle For CRISPR: Edited Cells Might Cause Cancer, Find Two Studies Slashdotby msmash on medicine at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at June 11, 2018, 11:04 pm)

Editing cell genomes with CRISPR-Cas9 might increase the risk of developing cancer, two studies published Monday warn. From a report: Editing cells' genomes with CRISPR-Cas9 might increase the risk that the altered cells, intended to treat disease, will trigger cancer, two studies published on Monday warn -- a potential game-changer for the companies developing CRISPR-based therapies. In the studies, published in Nature Medicine, scientists found that cells whose genomes are successfully edited by CRISPR-Cas9 have the potential to seed tumors inside a patient. That could make some CRISPR'd cells ticking time bombs, according to researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and, separately, Novartis. CRISPR has already dodged two potentially fatal bullets -- a 2017 claim that it causes sky-high numbers of off-target effects was retracted in March, and a report of human immunity to Cas9 was largely shrugged off as solvable. But experts are taking the cancer-risk finding seriously.

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[no title] Scripting News(cached at June 11, 2018, 11:03 pm)

Here's a page, being served over HTTPS, that includes HTTP files. None of the code works. Look in the JS console, you'll see lots of errors. Converting to HTTPS isn't just about servers, you'll have to deal with a lot of old HTML, styles and script files.
Canada's 'Random' Immigration Lottery Uses Microsoft Excel, Which Isn't Actually Ran Slashdotby msmash on math at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at June 11, 2018, 10:34 pm)

An anonymous reader writes: Last year, Canada introduced a new lottery system used to extend permanent-resident status to the parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens. The process was designed to randomly select applicants in order to make the process fairer than the old first-come, first-served system. There's just one problem: the software used to run the lottery isn't actually random. The Globe and Mail reported the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) uses Microsoft Excel to run the immigration lottery to select 10,000 people for permanent resident status from a field of about 100,000 applications received each year. Experts warned that the random number generating function in Excel isn't actually random and may put some applicants at a disadvantage. First, it's best to understand just how the lottery system works. An Access to Information request filed by The Globe and Mail shows that IRCC inputs the application number for every person entering the lottery into Excel, then assigns them a random number to each using a variation of the program's RAND command. They then sort the list from smallest to largest based on the random number assigned and take the first 10,000 applications with the lowest numbers. The system puts a lot of faith in Excel's random function, which it might not deserve. According to Universite de Montreal computer science professor Pierre L'Ecuyer, Excel is "very bad" at generating random numbers because it relies on an old generator that is out of date. He also warned that Excel doesn't pass statistical tests and is less random than it appears, which means some people in the lottery may actually have a lower chance of being selected than others.

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[no title] Scripting News(cached at June 11, 2018, 10:33 pm)

Trump is Obama-inverse. He hates the G7 because they loved Obama. He loves KJU because he and Obama hated each other. He hates Iran because Obama did a deal with them. He loves coal because Obama loves clean energy. Etc etc.
On Not Doing Prepared Talks Any More inessential.com(cached at June 11, 2018, 10:32 pm)

Some time last year I decided to retire from doing prepared talks at conferences.

I’ve been doing them for 15 years, and I’ve enjoyed some of them. Eventually I started playing with the form, and that was kind of fun.

The best talks I ever did usually had some story-telling parts, and those turned out to be the parts that people liked most. The only problem with that is that my stories usually didn’t have anything to do with the conference. I just like telling stories. Stories about raccoons and squirrels. :)

Preparing a talk is a lot of work, and my standards for my talks kept going up, which meant ever more preparation, and more stress — and since I didn’t love it, I decided to stop.

I don’t mind being in front of an audience, though — I’ll emcee, appear on a panel, moderate a panel, or play in a Breakpoints Jam.

But the actual talks from me are over.

Here’s the thing, though: this means one less middle-aged white man taking up a slot. This is a good thing. If you were thinking of asking me to do a prepared talk at your conference, instead ask someone who doesn’t look like me.

And if you’re having trouble finding someone, just ask me and I’ll help.

Pakistan: Nawaz Sharif's lawyers quit corruption trial in protest AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at June 11, 2018, 10:30 pm)

The lawyers quit after the court rejected their petition seeking indefinite extension to the corruption trial.
Four arrested in Iraq over ballot box storage blaze AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at June 11, 2018, 10:30 pm)

Three of the suspects are policemen and the fourth is an employee of the Independent High Elections Commission.
Radio Reporter Who Lost Voice Returns To Air Using App Built From Archived Audio Slashdotby msmash on technology at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at June 11, 2018, 10:04 pm)

McGruber writes: Jamie Dupree had been a radio reporter from 1983 until the Spring of 2016, when he lost his voice. His official diagnosis is a rare neurological condition known as "Tongue Protrusion Dystonia" -- for some unknown reason when he tries to talk, his tongue pushes forward out of his mouth, and his throat clenches, leading to a voice that is strangled and strained, as it is a struggle to string together more than a few words at a time. Dupree's plight attracted the attention of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who went to the floor of the House and delivered a speech that publicized Dupree's voice troubles and the lack of answers. Other reporters wrote stories about Dupree and people inside his company, Cox Media Group, tried to find a high tech solution to get him back on the air. They eventually found a Scottish company named CereProc which agreed to sift through years of Dupree's archived audio to build a voice -- which, when paired with a text-to-speech application -- would sound like Dupree and get him back on the radio. Dupree writes that the app works and will allow him to "talk" on the radio again. Starting next week, he will again provide stories to news-talk radio stations and be back on the air in hourly newscasts.

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Net-ACME2-0.12 search.cpan.orgby Felipe Gasper at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at June 11, 2018, 10:03 pm)

L-standard ACME (Let’s Encrypt) client
Seoul hopes Singapore summit could lead to peace with North Korea AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at June 11, 2018, 9:30 pm)

South Korea hopes that Washington's meeting with Pyongyang will open the way to end the Korean War.
President announces new Madagascar government after court order AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at June 11, 2018, 9:30 pm)

A court ruling required a 'consensus' administration to resolve a crisis sparked by electoral reform last month.
US Sanctions Russians Over Military, Intelligence Hacking Slashdotby msmash on usa at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at June 11, 2018, 9:06 pm)

The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on three Russian individuals and five companies on Monday, saying they had worked with Moscow's military and intelligence services on ways to conduct cyber attacks against the United States and its allies. From a report: "The United States is engaged in an ongoing effort to counter malicious actors working at the behest of the Russian Federation and its military and intelligence units to increase Russiaâ(TM)s offensive cyber capabilities," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. "The entities designated today have directly contributed to improving Russia's cyber and underwater capabilities through their work with the FSB and therefore jeopardize the safety and security of the United States and our allies," Mnuchin said, using an acronym for Russia's Federal Security Service.

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It's 2018 and USB Type-C Is Still a Mess Slashdotby msmash on it at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at June 11, 2018, 8:34 pm)

An anonymous reader shares a column: USB Type-C was billed as the solution for all our future cable needs, unifying power and data delivery with display and audio connectivity, and ushering in an age of the one-size-fits-all cable. Unfortunately for those already invested in the USB Type-C ecosystem, which is anyone who has bought a flagship phone in the past couple of years, the standard has probably failed to live up to the promises. Even the seemingly most basic function of USB Type-C -- powering devices -- has become a mess of compatibility issues, conflicting proprietary standards, and a general lack of consumer information to guide purchasing decisions. The problem is that the features supported by different devices aren't clear, yet the defining principle of the USB Type-C standard makes consumers think everything should just work. The charging example clearly demonstrates a very common frustration with the standard as it currently stands. Moving phones between different chargers, even of the same current and voltage ratings, often won't produce the same charging speeds. Furthermore, picking a third party USB Type-C cable to replace the typically too short included cable can result in losing fast charging capabilities.

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