Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Most-common application (Score 1) 17

"...remove backgrounds from a video feed in real-time..."

No, honey, I'm not calling from a bar. I'm at work. See the totally work-related stuff in the background?
Music? What music? Oh, Bob just has his computer playing an audio-stream really loud. I should probably ask him to turn that down, but I'll do that after I get off the phone.
Yeah, it's pretty busy at work. Busy, busy. (sip) Mmm, good coffee. I gotta stay late. Okay, gotta go. Bye!

Comment B.S.-marketing from Microsoft (Score 2) 131

by ItsJustAPseudonym (#49475935) Attached to: How Mission Creep Killed a Gaming Studio
I notice in the article that Microsoft repeatedly released information about the game that was completely divorced from reality. Complete bullshit. Repeatedly. That should have been a gi-frigging-gantic red flag, right there.

What did the game studio think? That stuff would magically work itself out? It sounds like they waited too long to review the actual features versus the Marketing hype with Microsoft.

Submission + - Sharp Announces 4K Smartphone Display (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Japanese electronics giant Sharp has announced production of 5.5" displays with 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution. They'll hit the market next year. The display will have a pixel density of 806 PPI. It's not known yet which smartphone makers will build devices with these screens. The displays cost significantly more than a more typical 1080p or 1440p display, so they'll probably only make it into high-end phones. On the other hand, this will help to drive down prices for lower-resolution displays, so it could indirectly benefit everybody.

Submission + - Can civilization reboot without fossil fuels? (aeon.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We often talk about our dependence on fossil fuels, and vigorously debate whether and how we should reduce that dependence. This article at Aeon sidesteps the political bickering and asks an interesting technological question: if we had to rebuild society, could we do it without all the fossil fuels we used to do it the first time? When people write about post-apocalyptic scenarios, the focus is usually on preserving information long enough for humanity to rebuild. But actually rebuilding turns out to be quite a challenge when all the easy oil has been bled from the planet. It's not that we're running out, it's that the best spots for oil now require high tech machinery. This would create a sort of chicken-and-egg problem for a rebuilding society. Technological progress could still happen using other energy production methods. But it would be very slow — we'd never see the dramatic accelerations that marked the industrial age, and then the information age. "A slow-burn progression through the stages of mechanisation, supported by a combination of renewable electricity and sustainably grown biomass, might be possible after all. Then again, it might not. We’d better hope we can secure the future of our own civilisation, because we might have scuppered the chances of any society to follow in our wake."

Submission + - 'Urban Death Project' Proposes to Compost the Dead 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Even as more people opt for interment in simple shrouds or biodegradable caskets, urban cemeteries continue to fill up and cremation is a problematic option for the environmentally conscious, as the process releases greenhouse gases.Now Catrin Einhorn reports at the NYT that architect Katrina Spade has designed a facility for human composting that is attracting interest from environmental advocates and scientists. “Composting makes people think of banana peels and coffee grounds,” says Spade. But “our bodies have nutrients. What if we could grow new life after we’ve died?” The Urban Death Project's plans call for a three-story-high polished concrete composting structure in Seattle called "the core," which would be surrounded by contemplative spaces for visitors. After a ceremony — religious or not — friends and family would help insert the body into the core. Over several weeks a body would turn into about one cubic yard of compost, enough to plant a tree or a patch of flowers.

For most people in the US, there are two options after death: You are buried or you are burned. The costs, both environmental and financial, are significant, but we accept these options because they are all that we know. Conventional burial is anything but natural. Cadavers are preserved with embalming fluid containing formaldehyde, a carcinogen then buried in caskets made of metal or wood, and placed inside a concrete or metal burial vault. The tradition of embalming in the United States is relatively new, beginning in the Civil War when northern families needed to get their dead men home from the South. Spade understands the idea of human composting may be icky to some, but it’s an important part of her concept, the thing that differentiates it from natural burial, which requires extensive land. "I’m sure I’ll continue to get pushback, but I’ll continue to be stubborn because I think it’s really important that we’re part of a larger ecosystem.”

Submission + - Leaked details, if true, point to potent AMD Zen CPU (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For more than a year, information on AMD’s next-generation CPU architecture, codenamed Zen, has tantalized the company’s fans — and those who simply want a more effective competitor against Intel. Now, the first concrete details have begun to appear. And if they’re accurate, the next-generation chip could pack a wallop.

Submission + - 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track (pnas.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers.

Submission + - Republicans introduce a bill to overturn net neutrality

Submitted by grimmjeeper
grimmjeeper writes:

A group of Republican lawmakers has introduced a bill that would invalidate the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed net neutrality rules. The legislation, introduced by Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican, is called a resolution of disapproval, a move that allows Congress to review new federal regulations from government agencies, using an expedited legislative process.

This move should come as little surprise to anyone. While the main battle in getting net neutrality has been won, the war is far from over.

Submission + - Congress Introduces the Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2015 (house.gov)

Submitted by Major Blud
Major Blud writes: Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the Fair Play Fair Pay Act today that would end regulations that don't require terrestrial radio stations to pay royalties to artists and labels. Currently, AM/FM radio stations aren't required to pay royalties to publishers and songwriters. The proposed measure requires stations that earn less than $1 million a year in revenue to pay $500 annually. For nonprofit public, college and other non-commercial broadcasters, the fee would be $100 per year — religious and talk stations being exempt from any payments. Larger radio companies like iHeartMedia (858 stations in the US) would have to pay more.

"The current system is antiquated and broken. It pits technologies against each other, and allows certain services to get away with paying little or nothing to artists. For decades, AM/FM radio has used whatever music it wants without paying a cent to the musicians, vocalists, and labels that created it. Satellite radio has paid below market royalties for the music it uses, growing into a multibillion dollar business on the back of an illogical ‘grandfathered’ royalty standard that is now almost two decades old,” said Congressman Nadler.

Slashdot Top Deals

One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener

Close