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Submission + - How the World's First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap (wired.com)

Submitted by anavictoriasaavedra
anavictoriasaavedra writes: Eccentric billionaires are tough to impress, so their minions must always think big when handed vague assignments. Ross Perot’s staffers did just that in 2006, when their boss declared that he wanted to decorate his Plano, Texas, headquarters with relics from computing history. Aware that a few measly Apple I’s and Altair 880’s wouldn’t be enough to satisfy a former presidential candidate, Perot’s people decided to acquire a more singular prize: a big chunk of ENIAC, the “Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer.” The ENIAC was a 27-ton, 1,800-square-foot bundle of vacuum tubes and diodes that was arguably the world’s first true computer. The hardware that Perot’s team diligently unearthed and lovingly refurbished is now accessible to the general public for the first time, back at the same Army base where it almost rotted into oblivion.

Comment Gonna miss Intel mobos (Score 1) 294

So sad to hear Intel is going out of the mobo business. True, some were duds, but overall, my lappy's Intel and my desktop Intel have held out remarkably well over the years (they're both c.2008) and have accepted at least 3 iterations of Windows, 3 different Hackintosh versions and any Ubuntu since 8.10.

Submission + - Google Tips Off Police To Child Porn Transmitted Using Gmail (yahoo.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: A Houston man has been arrested after Google sent a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children saying the man had explicit images of a child in his email, according to Houston police.

The man was a registered sex offender, convicted of sexually assaulting a child in 1994, reports Tim Wetzel at KHOU Channel 11 News in Houston.

"He was keeping it inside of his email. I can't see that information, I can't see that photo, but Google can," Detective David Nettles of the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce told Channel 11.

After Google reportedly tipped off the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the center alerted police, who used the information to get a warrant.

A search of the man's other devices revealed more suspicious images and text messages. Police arrested him and he's being held on a $200,000 bond.

On one hand, most people would certainly applaud the use of technology to scan email in a case like this.

On the other, debate rages about how much privacy users can expect when using Google's services like email. In a word: none.

A year ago, in a court brief, Google said as much. Then, in April, after a class-action case against Google for email scanning fell apart, Google updated its terms of service to warn people that it was automatically analyzing emails .

Considering Google has been working to fight online child sexual abuse since 2006, it stands to reason the company would scan emails looking for those sorts of images. Google has never come right out and said so, but hinted strongly at it about a year ago when Jacquelline Fuller, director of Google Giving, specifically mentioned the National Center's "CyberTipline" in a blog post . The CyberTipline receives leads and tips regarding suspected crimes.

Submission + - Ancient skulls show civilization rose as testosterone fell

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Even though Modern humans started appearing around 200,000 years ago, it was only about fifty thousand years ago that artistry and tool making became popular. New research shows that society bloomed when testosterone levels in humans started dropping. A paper published in the journal Current Anthropology, suggests that a testosterone deficit facilitated the friendliness and cooperation between humans, which lead to modern society. “Whatever the cause, reduced testosterone levels enabled increasingly social people to better learn from and cooperate with each other, allowing the acceleration of cultural and technological innovation that is the hallmark of modern human success,” says University of Utah biology graduate student Robert Cieri.

Submission + - Putin government moves to take control of Energia 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Vitaly Lopota, the president of Russia’s largest space company Energia, was suspended Friday by the company’s board of directors.

The move appears to be part of an effort by Russia’s government to obtain majority control over Energia, of which it owns a 38-percent share. The directors elected Igor Komarov as its new chairman of the board. Komarov is chief of the Russian United Rocket and Space Corporation (URSC), the government-owned company tasked with consolidating Russia’s sprawling space sector.

The government is also conducting a criminal investigation of Lopota, which might be justified but appears to be a power play designed to both eliminate him from the game as well as make sure everyone else tows the line so that URSC can take complete control.

Submission + - How Many Members of Congress Does it Take to Screw in a $400MM CS Bill?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Over at Code.org, they're banging the gong to celebrate that more than 100 members of Congress are now co-sponsoring the Computer Science Education Act (HR 2536), making the bill "to strengthen elementary and secondary computer science education" the most broadly cosponsored education bill in the House. By adding fewer than 50 words to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, HR 2536 would elevate Computer Science to a "core academic subject" (current core academic subjects are English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history, and geography), a status that opens the doors not only to a number of funding opportunities, but also to a number of government regulations. So, now that we know it takes 112 U.S. Representatives to screw in a CS education bill, the next question is, "How many taxpayer dollars will it take to pay for the consequences?" While Code.org says "the bill is cost-neutral and doesn’t introduce new programs or mandates," the organization in April pegged the cost of putting CS in every school at $300-$400 million. In Congressional testimony last January, Code.org proposed that "comprehensive immigration reform efforts that tie H-1B visa fees to a new STEM education fund" could be used "to support the teaching and learning of more computer science in K-12 schools," echoing Microsoft's National Talent Strategy.

Comment Coincidence (Score 1) 144

Yesterday was also the 52nd anniversary of the launch of the Telstar-1, the world's first active telecom satellite, the world's first privately-ventured space-faring mission and first commercial payload into space. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/tec... PS: Does anybody else find it weird that Telstar and Death Star not only are phonetically similar, but look eerily so as well?

Submission + - NYT joins Facebook fray: How a stale press release triggered media frenzy (mit.edu)

Submitted by anavictoriasaavedra
anavictoriasaavedra writes: In response to this Slashdot post: http://tech.slashdot.org/story... Sometimes editors at media outlets get a little panicked when there’s a big story swirling around and they haven’t done anything with it. It all started as a largely ignored paper about the number of positive and negative words people use in Facebook posts. Now it’s a major scandal. Yesterday the New York Times connected the Facebook experiment to suicides. The story was headlined, Should Facebook Manipulate Users, and it rests on the questionable assumption that such manipulation has happened

Submission + - Brain-decoding chip, algorithms give quadriplegic movement again 1

Submitted by rlinke
rlinke writes: Thanks to a computer chip, algorithms and nearly 10 years of research, a 23-year-old quadriplegic moved his fingers and hand with the power of his own thoughts.

The system, which is aimed at spinal cord injuries, is designed to reconnect the brain directly to muscles, allowing voluntary and functional control of a paralyzed limb.

The technology may one day give self-propelled movement back to patients affected by brain and spinal cord injuries.

Submission + - Woman Has Her Skull Replaced With A 3-D-Printed Plastic One (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by anavictoriasaavedra
anavictoriasaavedra writes: A woman from the Netherlands has had the entire top section of her skull replaced with a transparent, plastic implant. Neurosurgeons from the University Medical Centre Utrecht performed the extreme procedure to save the woman from a rare chronic bone disorder, which increased the thickness of her cranium from 1.5 centimeters to five centimeters and put her at risk of permanent brain damage. CAVEAT LECTOR: Inaccurate title, as it was basically the skull cap, not the entire skull but it's still notable.

Submission + - How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love (wired.com) 2

Submitted by anavictoriasaavedra
anavictoriasaavedra writes: McKinlay, a lanky 35-year-old with tousled hair, was one of about 40 million Americans looking for romance through websites like Match.com, J-Date, and e-Harmony, and he’d been searching in vain since his last breakup nine months earlier. He’d sent dozens of cutesy introductory messages to women touted as potential matches by OkCupid’s algorithms. Most were ignored; he’d gone on a total of six first dates... in June 2012, it dawned on him that he was doing it wrong. He’d been approaching online matchmaking like any other user. Instead, he realized, he should be dating like a mathematician.

Submission + - How Ray Kurzweil Will Help Google Make the Ultimate AI Brain (wired.com)

Submitted by anavictoriasaavedra
anavictoriasaavedra writes: Over at Wired there's an interesting interview with Ray Kurzweill. He speculates the gap between natural language and computer understanding of it will be closed by 2029. When asked if the problem can be reduced to hardware and software, Kurzweill replies: 'There are both hardware and software requirements. I believe we actually are very close to having the requisite software techniques. Partly this is being assisted by understanding how the human brain works, and we’re making exponential gains there. We can now see inside a living brain and see individual inter-neural connections being formed and firing in real time. We can see your brain create your thoughts and thoughts create your brain. A lot of this research reveals how the mechanism of the neocortex works, which is where we do our thinking. This provides biologically inspired methods that we can emulate in our computers. We’re already doing that. Using these biologically inspired models, plus all of the research that’s been done over the decades in artificial intelligence, combined with exponentially expanding hardware, we will achieve human levels within two decades'.

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