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Math

Ancient and Modern People Followed Same Mathematical Rule To Build Cities 81

Posted by samzenpus from the using-the-same-template dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news of a study that shows similarities in how cities are built throughout time. "A study of archeological data from ancient Mexican settlements reveals remarkable similarities between pre-Colombian cities and modern ones, lending support to the idea that urban spaces are shaped by universal social behaviors. Sure, each city has its own local quirks, architecture, language and cuisine. But recently, some theoretical scientists have started to find there are universal laws that shape all urban spaces. And a new study suggests the same mathematical rules might apply to ancient settlements, too. Using archaeological data from the ruins of Tenochtitlan and thousands of other sites around it in Mexico, researchers found that private houses and public monuments were built in predictable ways."
Earth

What If We Lost the Sky? 421

Posted by timothy from the we'd-still-have-the-space-needle dept.
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes "Anna North writes in the NYT that a report released last week by the National Research Council calls for research into reversing climate change through a process called albedo modification: reflecting sunlight away from earth by, for instance, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere. But such a process could, some say, change the appearance of the sky — and that in turn could affect everything from our physical health to the way we see ourselves. "You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore." says Alan Robock. "Astronomers wouldn't be happy, because you'd have a cloud up there permanently. It'd be hard to see the Milky Way anymore."

According to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, losing the night sky would have big consequences. "When you go outside, and you walk in a beautiful setting, and you just feel not only uplifted but you just feel stronger. There's clearly a neurophysiological basis for that," says Keltner, adding that looking up at a starry sky provides "almost a prototypical awe experience," an opportunity to feel "that you are small and modest and part of something vast." If we lose the night sky "we lose something precious and sacred." "We're finding in our lab that the experience of awe gets you to feel connected to something larger than yourself, see the humanity in other people," says Paul K. Piff. "In many ways it's kind of an antidote to narcissism." And the sky is one of the few sources of that experience that's available to almost everybody: "Not everyone has access to the ocean or giant trees, or the Grand Canyon, but we certainly all live beneath the night sky."

Alan Robock says one possible upside of adding aerosols could be beautiful red and yellow sunsets as "the yellow and red colors reflect off the bottom of this cloud." Robock recommends more research into albedo modification: "If people ever are tempted to do this, I want them to have a lot of information about what the potential benefits and risks would be so they can make an informed decision. Dr. Abdalati says deploying something like albedo modification is a last-ditch effort. "We've gotten ourselves into a climate mess. The fact that we're even talking about these kinds of things is indicative of that."

Comment Re:Submit Form To Download? (Score 1) 130

Why does the Linux Foundation force its website visitors to submit a form before they can read this report?

The LInux Foundation is pretty much out of touch with the community, it is basically just a self appointed manager circle jerk. Not understanding basic open source etiquette is a clear demonstration of that.
Biotech

Human DNA Enlarges Mouse Brains 193

Posted by timothy from the what-about-vice-versa dept.
sciencehabit writes Researchers have increased the size of mouse brains by giving the rodents a piece of human DNA that controls gene activity. The work provides some of the strongest genetic evidence yet for how the human intellect surpassed those of all other apes. The human gene causes cells that are destined to become nerve cells to divide more frequently, thereby providing a larger of pool of cells that become part of the cortex. As a result, the embryos carrying human HARE5 have brains that are 12% larger than the brains of mice carrying the chimp version of the enhancer. The team is currently testing these mice to see if the bigger brains made them any smarter.

Comment Re:Seriously (Score 4, Informative) 156

by Tough Love (#49063755) Attached to: Bill Gates On Educating the World

...we can all believe that the 31.6 billion dollars his foundation has GRANTED since inception internationally is not much of a personal sacrifice in relative terms...

You're a bit confused. That is somewhat close to the amount the foundation was _endowed_ with, but actual grants are not remotely close to that. Skeptics point out that the foundation smells like a gigantic tax dodge... the money remains under Bill Gates' control with not a cent of tax paid on it.

Comment Re:ZVox (Score 1) 249

by Tough Love (#49055561) Attached to: How good is your audio equipment?

It's not only sound quality that's subjective, price is too

Sound quality is only subjective for posers. Otherwise, it can be accurately described in terms of frequency response, harmonic distortion, etc.
Encryption

New Encryption Method Fights Reverse Engineering 215

Posted by Soulskill from the with-many-obfuscations,-all-bugs-are-deep dept.
New submitter Dharkfiber sends an article about the Hardened Anti-Reverse Engineering System (HARES), which is an encryption tool for software that doesn't allow the code to be decrypted until the last possible moment before it's executed. The purpose is to make applications as opaque as possible to malicious hackers trying to find vulnerabilities to exploit. It's likely to find work as an anti-piracy tool as well. To keep reverse engineering tools in the dark, HARES uses a hardware trick that’s possible with Intel and AMD chips called a Translation Lookaside Buffer (or TLB) Split. That TLB Split segregates the portion of a computer’s memory where a program stores its data from the portion where it stores its own code’s instructions. HARES keeps everything in that “instructions” portion of memory encrypted such that it can only be decrypted with a key that resides in the computer’s processor. (That means even sophisticated tricks like a “cold boot attack,” which literally freezes the data in a computer’s RAM, can’t pull the key out of memory.) When a common reverse engineering tool like IDA Pro reads the computer’s memory to find the program’s instructions, that TLB split redirects the reverse engineering tool to the section of memory that’s filled with encrypted, unreadable commands.
Windows

Microsoft Releases Windows 10 Preview For Phones 85

Posted by Soulskill from the good-news-for-all-six-people-who-bought-lumias dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has launched Windows 10 preview for phones. To get started, you'll need to download the Windows Insider app from the Windows Phone Store. Microsoft has already released multiple new Windows 10 preview builds, but those were limited to just PCs. The new preview for smartphones comes with a slew of new features. Until now, the Windows Insider app only worked for Microsoft employees. Now, users who are part of the Insider program can install the first Windows 10 preview build, as long as they have one of the six compatible devices. The Windows 10 preview works on the Lumia 630, Lumia 635, Lumia 636, Lumia 638, Lumia 730, and Lumia 830.
The Almighty Buck

Microsoft Trademarks "Windows 365" 191

Posted by samzenpus from the one-easy-payment dept.
jones_supa writes The talks about a subscription-based Windows have begun again. With Windows 10 those ideas did not materialize in the way that many had speculated. Even though Microsoft has not fully detailed its Windows 10 pricing strategy, it is not believed that Microsoft is targeting an annual subscription charge for Windows at this time. However, it turns out that Microsoft has recently filed for a trademark for Windows 365, which adds a bit of fuel to the subscription based version of Windows. As of right now, Microsoft has only claimed this branding right, but as for what they will do with it, only time will tell. Deep inside the company, the idea is clearly still bubbling there.
The Internet

The Man Squatting On Millions of Dollars Worth of Domain Names 175

Posted by timothy from the your-name-here dept.
Jason Koebler writes For the last 21 years, Gary Millin and his colleagues at World Accelerator have been slowly accumulating a veritable treasure trove of seemingly premium generic domain names. For instance, Millin owns, has sold, or has bartered away world.com, usa.com, doctor.com, lawyer.com, comic.com, email.com, cyberservices.com, and more than 1,000 other domain names that can be yours (including yours.com, which he owns), as long as you've got the startup idea to back it up. Millin doesn't sell domain names anymore, instead, he trades them to startups in exchange for a stake in the company.

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All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise. -- James Martin

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