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An anonymous reader quotes Psychology Today's "Boomer's 3.0" blog: More and more companies, especially those in the tech sector, are wisely concluding that the physical infrastructure constructed to put employees together in a building is largely inefficient if not unnecessary. Beyond the potential health risks, office buildings are expensive to construct and maintain, and rents, taxes, and insurance comprise a high percentage of operating costs. It makes simple fiscal sense to bypass these expenses, assuming there is an acceptable alternative with which people can effectively communicate with each other. The internet is that alternative... Because a person on Zoom or its equivalent has far less physical presence than in real life, managers may be more open to hiring someone past middle age. Likewise, young adults may be more receptive to working with older adults in a virtual setting than in a real one. It may be an odd thing to contemplate, but less attention is paid to a person's physical attributes in a little square box on a screen than if he or she is in the same room. For tens of millions of baby boomers, the prospect of corporate culture becoming more age-friendly due to advancing technology would be a very welcome development. Rather than end one's career at a predetermined age...most of today's sexagenarians and septuagenarians want to work as long as they possibly can.

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Linus Torvalds released Linux 5.7 rc7 today, saying it "looks very normal... none of the fixes look like there's anything particularly scary going on." But then he added something else: [T]he biggest excitement this week for me was just that I upgraded my main machine, and for the first time in about 15 years, my desktop isn't Intel-based. No, I didn't switch to ARM yet, but I'm now rocking an AMD Threadripper 3970x. My 'allmodconfig' test builds are now three times faster than they used to be, which doesn't matter so much right now during the calming down period, but I will most definitely notice the upgrade during the next merge window. The Register writes: Torvalds didn't divulge any further details about his new rig, but the 3970x is quite the beast, boasting 32 cores and 64 threads at 3.7GHz with the ability to burst up to 4.5GHz, all built on TSMC's 7nm FinFET process... Torvalds has probably acquired a whole new PC, as the Threadripper range requires a sTRX4 socket and those debuted on motherboards from late 2019. Whatever he's running, it has more cores than Intel currently offers in a CPU designed for PCs. Even Chipzilla's high-end CoreX range tops out at 18 cores. AMD will be over the moon that such a high profile IT pro has adopted their kit and pointed to its performance. Or, as long-time Slashdot reader williamyf puts it, "Good endorsement for AMD, a PR blow for Intel."

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While reinstating the PATRIOT Act, the U.S. Senate blocked an amendment which would've shielded Americans' browsing and search histories from warrantless searches. But that fight may not be over, reports TechSpot: [S]everal tech companies including Mozilla, Reddit, Twitter, and Patreon have co-signed a letter asking the House of Representatives to tidy up this mess. The House still needs to pass the bill for it to become law, and they can force the inclusion of the amendment. They vote this week. "Our users demand that we serve as responsible stewards of their private information, and our industry is predicated on that trust," says the letter. "Americans deserve to have their online searches and browsing kept private, and only available to the government pursuant to a warrant." The amendment has also received support from dozens of civil rights and liberties groups, including the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Human Rights Watch. They co-signed a separate letter last week... "[S]upport for the underlying policy is now abundantly clear," argues the second letter, "both within Congress and among thepublic: the FBI should not be allowed to use the PATRIOT Act to surveil Americans' online activity without a warrant."

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schwit1 quotes UPI: City-dwellers are nearly 30 percent more likely to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis than those living in more rural areas, a study presented Friday at the European Academy of Neurology Virtual Congress has found. Based on the results, which will also be published in European Journal of Neurology, air pollution could be a risk factor for the development of the disease, according to the authors, who conducted their research in Italy. "It is well recognized that immune diseases such as MS are associated with multiple factors, both genetic and environmental," co-author Dr. Roberto Bergamaschi, of the IRCCS Mondino Foundation in Pavia, Italy, said in a statement. "We believe that air pollution interacts through several mechanisms in the development of MS and the results of this study strengthen that hypothesis," he added.

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"One of the longer chapters of the International Space Station has come to a close," writes Engadget. "NASA has sent the last of its 11 ExPRESS (Expedite the Processing of Experiments to the Space Station) science racks to the orbiting facility, 19 years after sending the first two." They don't look like much, but they provide the power, storage, climate control and communications for up to 10 small payloads — they're key to many of the experiments that run aboard the ISS and will help the station live up to its potential research capabilities. This last rack was carried aboard a Japanese cargo ship and should be installed and functioning by fall 2020. While the EXPRESS racks should be useful for a while yet, this effectively marks the end of an era for NASA's ISS work... Originally developed by engineers at Boeing and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, "The first two completed racks were delivered to the space station on STS-100 in 2001 and have been in continuous operation ever since," notes a NASA press release, "as have all the subsequent added racks." And since then NASA has logged more than 85 total years of combined rack operational hours. "The sheer volume of science that's been conducted using the racks up til now is just overwhelming," says Shaun Glasgow, project manager for the EXPRESS Racks at Marshall. "And as we prepare to return human explorers to the Moon and journey on to Mars, it's even more exciting to consider all the scientific investigations still to come."

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