Update used wrong data type, causing Tinder to Spotify to fall over

A change in the Facebook SDK backend managed to crash many popular iOS apps that integrated the code library, used for implementing various Facebook services.…

The internet was seen as a major catalyst for the furry fandom finding one another during the times before we held conventions. During that earlier period in the 1990s, conventions and meets were rare, and finding one another was done mostly through the chat rooms and message boards of the past. There was no bandwidth for video or sharing major animation projects, therefore most of our intimate conversations were textual.

For many younger furries, it was a time that was lost in the annals of a distant history. Instead they found themselves joining in amongst a wave of growing conventions being held in various places around the world on any given weekend. Ones where those in custom fursuits march out in the streets openly rather than feeling a stifling isolation of being cooped up in hotel spaces, with a handful of home made creations, being wary of a hostile media looking for a freak show.

Coming out of 2019, it seemed that the time where furry was just an internet thing was fully behind it. However a series of unfortunate events were in line for 2020, a year that has led humanity to be forced into their rooms by an irate Mother Nature as an easily spread virus has forced governments around the globe to take drastic measures to slow its spread and put strict limits on social gatherings. A situation which has forced both the furry fandom, and the internet that brought it together, back to their roots.

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IBM inventors received a record 9,043 patents in 2017, marking the company’s 25th consecutive year of U.S. patent leadership and crossing the 100,000-patent milestone. The new patents were granted to a diverse group of more than 8,500 IBM researchers, engineers, scientists and designers in 47 different U.S. states and 47 countries.

IBM today announced that it broke the U.S. patent record with 8,088 patents granted to its inventors in 2016, marking the 24th consecutive year of innovation leadership. IBM’s 2016 patent output covers a diverse range of inventions in artificial intelligence and cognitive computing, cognitive health, cloud, cybersecurity and other strategic growth areas for the company.

Highlights  IBM scientists have measured how long information can stay in an individual atom  IBM breakthrough enables ability to actually record, study and visualize the magnetism of individual atoms at staggering speeds – one million times faster than previously possible  Could be valuable tool to study solar cells, quantum computing and storage-class memory at the nanoscale Today IBM researchers published a breakthrough technique in the peer-reviewed journal Science that measures how long a single atom can hold information, and giving scientists the ability to record, study and "visualize" extremely fast phenomena inside these atoms.

IBM today announced that it set a new U.S. patent record in 2011, marking the 19th consecutive year that the company has led the annual list of patent recipients. IBM inventors earned a record 6,180 U.S. patents in 2011, more than quadrupling Hewlett-Packard’s issuances and exceeding by six times those of Oracle/Sun.

Today on Data Privacy Day, IBM is announcing an innovative cloud-based technology for developers to help consumers better protect their personal data online such as their date of birth, home address and credit card numbers. As cybersecurity threats and identity theft continue to threaten both consumers and businesses, IBM scientists have been developing a clever cryptographic algorithm which enables transactions to occur without involuntarily sharing any personal data.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today announced that more than 2.6 million households across Australia submitting Census forms via the web-based eCensus solution. This represents a significant jump from the 2006 Census, when 778,000 (9.1 per cent) of Australian households completed their forms online.

At the most recent MSRI board of trustees meeting on Mar 7 (conducted online, naturally), Nicolas Jewell (a Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics at Berkeley, also affiliated with the Berkeley School of Public Health and the London School of Health and Tropical Disease), gave a presentation on the current coronavirus epidemic entitled “2019-2020 Novel Coronavirus […]

The coronavirus outbreak has officially been labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization, potentially grinding the global economy to a halt. Yet every step of the way, the Trump administration’s response has been to deny, blame, obfuscate, and generally cover up. 

Trump and his enablers are focused only on mitigating the economic consequences of the outbreak, especially before the election – mulling proposals like corporate tax cuts and bailouts for airlines and the hotel industry, but resisting the needs of average Americans and our broken healthcare system. 

The outbreak has also revealed the utter weakness of our social safety nets: workers may be forced to choose between a missed paycheck and risking their health because too many employers have no paid sick leave, schools are weighing whether or not to shut down because hundreds of thousands of poor children rely on them for hot meals, and our cruel for-profit healthcare system is preventing people from getting tested for the virus for fear of a hefty bill.

And, remember, 80 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Coupled with Trump’s incompetence and narcissism, it’s a recipe for total disaster.

Meanwhile, the Democratic electorate is in the midst of a primary to unseat this sociopath. After Tuesday, Biden has kept his delegate lead with wins in Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. And while the race isn’t over yet, it’s wise to start making contingency plans.

Biden’s biggest weakness is his failure to attract progressives and young voters. In a CNN exit poll for Michigan, Bernie won a whopping 82 percent of voters age 18-29. Without these voters, if Biden is the nominee, Democrats will not be able to get the votes needed to defeat Trump.

So what are Biden’s options for getting out the vote of this crucial portion of the Party? He must select a true progressive for Vice President, like Elizabeth Warren or even Bernie Sanders, who can push bold progressive ideas like a wealth tax, Medicare for All, tuition-free college, cancelling student debt, and a Green New Deal.

These progressive policies are also winners with the electorate – a majority of voters even in Mississippi and other southern states supported replacing the current healthcare system with a single-payer system, and polling continues to reflect this appetite for transformative change. Even if Bernie isn’t getting the support he counted on, his ideas are.

And don’t count Bernie out just yet. A debate is coming up this weekend that could boost his campaign enough to help him secure wins in later key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

But if he fails to get traction, he needs to do whatever he can to help reunite the party, and most importantly, keep working to shift the party in a progressive direction. Behind the scenes he needs to negotiate with Biden a pathway to gain progressive support.

Meanwhile, Biden needs to take up the issues of concern to young people, who are the future of the party and who Democrats can’t win without. This might seem like a pipe dream, but Biden has no choice. This is not 2016. The nation cannot afford another 4 years of Trump. If you’re angry – and rightfully so – use that anger to keep pushing the movement.

• 1 head romaine, chopped ($1.70)
• 1 orange, peeled and sectioned ($.50)
• 1 banana, sliced ($.30)
• 2 tablespoons sliced onion

• 2 oranges, peeled and sectioned ($1.00)
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar ($.20)
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup (or two droppers stevia) ($.40)
• 3 tablespoons tahini ($.40)
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• crushed red pepper flakes for the top

1. Prepare the salad ingredients.
2. Place all the dressing ingredients except the crushed red pepper flakes into a blender and puree until very smooth. 
3. Assemble the salad ingredients on plates or in bowls. Add the orange sections, banana slices, and onion to the top.
4. Pour salad dressing over and add a sprinkle of black pepper or crushed red pepper flakes. I added both.

The spread of coronavirus has shaken the economy with mass layoffs and increased uncertainty. As a result more and more Americans are finding themselves in mounting debt. In 2018, the American household debt reached an all-time high at $13.21 trillion across 300 million people. But for those with a diagnosable mental illness, debt has an even more detrimental impact.  One in four adults will experience a mental health event at some point in their life. The relationship between debt and […]

The post How to Break the Cycle of Debt and Mental Health appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Short breaks are among the most fundamental services for supporting families with disabled children. By providing breaks from caring and positive experiences for children and young people, they allow parent carers to focus on relationships with other children, or to have time to themselves or with their partner, leading to lower levels of psychological distress, higher levels of life satisfaction and better health. As a result, fewer parent carers reach ‘breaking point’ and fewer children require access to emergency provision or enter the looked after system. This report, commissioned by Every Disabled Child Matters, looks at the current provision of short breaks to families of disabled children in England.

The Better Breaks funding programme is focused on improving the range and availability of short break opportunities for disabled children and young people, particularly those with multiple support needs, including short break opportunities that families can enjoy together, or which allow parents and siblings to have time away from their caring responsibilities. This is the summary report.

As part of the implementation of the Equal Partners in Care (EPiC) Highland Carer’s Strategy 2014-2017 it was agreed to undertake a review of respite for Adult Carers of Adults (aged 16+). Independent consultants were commissioned by NHS Highland through Connecting Carers to undertake this work. There are four groups of people – totalling an estimated 200 people - with whom conversations have taken place during the review: Carers and staff from carer support organisations – more than 75 carers have given their views; Health and social care workforce – we have met with just over 50 people who have given their views and shared our initial findings with more than 60 others; Respite providers – we have met with staff from 15 organisations that are providers of respite Those staff responsible for overseeing the commissioning, planning and administration of respite.

The Short Breaks Fund helping to make breaks better and brighter for unpaid carers and cared-for people in Scotland. Launched in 2010 for one year, the fund has now been running for five years and has proved to be a lifeline for many carers. During the past five years the Scottish Government, through Shared Cared Scotland has distributed 12,547,409 to 697 projects to deliver innovative, tailor made breaks to groups and individuals.

In 2006 Mencap produced a comprehensive review of short break provision. Now, 10 years on, they are revisiting the support available for family carers to see whether recent policy initiatives and investment have delivered the much-needed change. A total of 264 family carers responded to their survey on short breaks provision and experiences of caring. They also sent Freedom of Information requests to all 152 local authorities in England that provide social care services. This report looks at short breaks provision in a climate of cuts to central and local government budgets. It examines the extent to which these cuts have impacted on the lives of people with a learning disability and their family carers. It also looks at the state of affairs for family carers of children and young people across the full spectrum of learning disability; from people with mild and moderate learning disabilities, to people with severe and profound disabilities.

The 10th international short break conference took place in Edinburgh from 13 to 15 September 2016. This conference report explores the barriers experienced in accessing short breaks and how these have been overcome.

Professor Lord Patel of Bradford OBE, former chair of the Mental Health Act Commission, makes the case for a radical new report that offers practical solutions to breaking integration barriers.