Comment Re:Translation? (Score 1) 7
WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, is looking at a lending feature in India
Comment China had been sanitizing cash (Score 4, Interesting) 171
Relatedly, China had been sanitizing cash to try to control the outbreak, even though a lot of payments in China are done over WeChat.
Climate Models Are Running Red Hot, and Scientists Don't Know Why (bloomberg.com) 445
The simulators used to forecast warming have suddenly started giving us less time. From a report: There are dozens of climate models, and for decades they've agreed on what it would take to heat the planet by about 3 Celsius. It's an outcome that would be disastrous -- flooded cities, agricultural failures, deadly heat -- but there's been a grim steadiness in the consensus among these complicated climate simulations. Then last year, unnoticed in plain view, some of the models started running very hot. The scientists who hone these systems used the same assumptions about greenhouse-gas emissions as before and came back with far worse outcomes. Some produced projections in excess of 5C, a nightmare scenario.
The scientists involved couldn't agree on why -- or if the results should be trusted. Climatologists began "talking to each other like, 'What'd you get?', 'What'd you get?'" said Andrew Gettelman, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, which builds a high-profile climate model. "The question is whether they've overshot," said Mark Zelinka, staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Researchers are starting to put together answers, a task that will take months at best, and there's not yet agreement on how to interpret the hotter results. The reason for worry is that these same models have successfully projected global warming for a half century. Their output continues to frame all major scientific, policy and private-sector climate goals and debates, including the sixth encyclopedic assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due out next year. If the same amount of climate pollution will bring faster warming than previously thought, humanity would have less time to avoid the worst impacts.
The scientists involved couldn't agree on why -- or if the results should be trusted. Climatologists began "talking to each other like, 'What'd you get?', 'What'd you get?'" said Andrew Gettelman, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, which builds a high-profile climate model. "The question is whether they've overshot," said Mark Zelinka, staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Researchers are starting to put together answers, a task that will take months at best, and there's not yet agreement on how to interpret the hotter results. The reason for worry is that these same models have successfully projected global warming for a half century. Their output continues to frame all major scientific, policy and private-sector climate goals and debates, including the sixth encyclopedic assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due out next year. If the same amount of climate pollution will bring faster warming than previously thought, humanity would have less time to avoid the worst impacts.
Comment Crafted messages turning into WebKit exploits (Score 1) 125
I can imagine someone sending SMS in bulk to get people to open Web pages containing WebKit exploits. At least make it a "Would you like to authenticate to example.com?" rather than adding to all those text-rendering-based crafted message attacks.
Comment Re:Proper article summary, hopefully (Score 1) 110
That is puzzling. I could not find any mention of this sort of 'surgery' in Google, even when typing the words "surgery appointment" in quotes or adding "uk".
I did, however, see that a surgery is simply a doctor's office in the UK. Ah, the English language...
Thanks!
Comment Re:Surgery Appointments? (Score 1) 110
The Member of Parliament discussed in this article also happens to be a doctor. If someone wanted to write to him as a constituent, I presume getting surgery appointments would not be the best of ideas. But, if someone was a patient of his...
Comment Proper article summary, hopefully (Score 4, Informative) 110
On the 22nd of January, The Guardian published a series of letters from its readers in its Letters section. In it, Bridget Craig had this to say:
I read more and more pleas to "email your MP about this..." I can't email my MP, the Conservative Dr Julian Lewis, as he does not have an email address for his constituents to use. I believe he is the only MP who doesn't let his constituents contact him in this way. I find this deplorable. It should be a requisite of his well-paid job.
Julian Lewis is a Member of Parliament, and also a doctor. He has a no-email policy. Instead, he requires his constituents (those he serves as a Member of Parliament) to communicate with him by [snail] mail or by phone, and his patients (those he serves as a doctor) by getting appointments with him.
He saw this criticism levelled at him by Bridget Craig and replied that no, his no-email policy was perfectly fine, and that email is often used for, essentially, spam. This article was also published in The Guardian's Letters section, on the 24th of January, and it was then submitted to Slashdot.
Researchers Working On Crystallizing Light 129
An anonymous reader writes Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter. The researchers are not shining light through crystal – they are transforming light into crystal. As part of an effort to develop exotic materials such as room-temperature superconductors, the researchers have locked together photons, the basic element of light, so that they become fixed in place. "It's something that we have never seen before," said Andrew Houck, one of the researchers. "This is a new behavior for light."
Study: Video Gamer Aggression Result of Game Experience, Not Violent Content 180
An anonymous reader writes "A new study published in the March edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology indicates that a gamer's experience of a video game and not the content of the game itself can give rise to violent behavior. In other words, 'researchers found it was not the narrative or imagery, but the lack of mastery of the game's controls and the degree of difficulty players had completing the game that led to frustration.' Based on their findings, researchers note that even games like Tetris and Candy Crush can inspire violent behavior more so than games like World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto if they are poorly designed and difficult to play."
Massachusetts Court Says 'Upskirt' Photos Are Legal 519
cold fjord writes with this CNN report: "Massachusetts' highest court ruled Wednesday that it is not illegal to secretly photograph underneath a person's clothing — a practice known as "upskirting" — prompting one prosecutor to call for a revision of state law. The high court ruled that the practice did not violate the law because the women who were photographed while riding Boston public transportation were not nude or partially nude."
Comment Re:BitTorrent Sync (Score 1) 146
+1 for BitTorrent Sync. Works pretty much flawlessly with syncing between android devices and desktops.
NASA: Curiosity Has Found Plastic On Mars 293
dsinc writes "Last week Curiosity was able to use its SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) device to confirm the discovery. A robotic arm with a complex system of Spectral Analysis devices was able to vaporize and identify gasses from the sample, concluding that it is in fact plastic. How plastic formed or ended up on the Martian surface is quite an exciting mystery that sparks many questions. The type of plastic sampled as we know so far can only be formed using petrochemicals, meaning not only that there could possibly be a source of oil on the Red Planet, but that somehow it got turned into plastic. Even more interesting is that oil or petrochemicals used to create this type of plastic are only known to come from ancient fossilized organic materials, such as zooplankton and algae, which geochemical processes convert into oil pointing to the earthshaking evidence that there was once life on mars. 'Right now we have multiple working hypotheses, and each hypothesis makes certain predictions about things like what the spherules are made of and how they are distributed,' said Curiosity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres, of Cornell University. 'Our job as we explore Matijevic Hill in the months ahead will be to make the observations that will let us test all the hypotheses carefully, and find the one that best fits the observations.'" Update: Yes, it's a hoax
Twitter Censors German Neo-Nazi Group, Within Germany 227
judgecorp writes "Twitter has censored a neo-Nazi group, blocking Besseres Hannover (Better Hannover), a group accused of promoting race hate. This is the first time Twitter has used its power of blocking users in specific countries, announced back in January. Although blocked in Germany, the group is visible to the rest of the world." Update: 10/18 14:46 GMT by T : Note, that's Twitter doing the blocking, not Google, as it appeared originally. HT to reader eldavojohn.
Want to Change the Slashdot Logo? For 1 Day in October, You Can 128
The Slashdot logo has been around for a long time now; the truth is, we're rather fond of it, and have only rarely introduced substantial changes. But for the month of October, as a way of celebrating the site's 15 years of delivering News for Nerds, we invite you to help us temporarily change it. If you have an idea of what the Slashdot logo should look like for one day in October, this is your chance to see it on the page. Starting September 15th, we'll be accepting entries, and sending limited edition anniversary T-shirts to the artists we pick to show off on the page throughout the month. (And a Nexus 7 tablet to the artist who ranks best in show.) Click through for information on what we're looking for, how to enter, and the long list of rules that the legal department has provided for your reading pleasure; we look forward to seeing and sharing your ideas.
Comment On interaction in communication media (Score 2) 166
Your example assumes you called a certain known endpoint (a person, or an automated telephone answering system) and interacted directly with it.
BitTorrent downloads from, and uploads to, unknown endpoints that happen to have or want the file, respectively.
On the one hand, you authorise your BitTorrent client to communicate with these hosts on your behalf, and your goal is the same (to get and give the file); this may constitute a form of interaction.
On the other hand, you have no control over which hosts your BitTorrent client contacts. These people may be people you know or strangers; people in the same or another jurisdiction. The link may be difficult to establish.
