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Comment Re:Do you give up higher cerebral function (Score 4, Informative) 211

Now that I've had a chance to sit down and read through both the study and a few other things... you're correct, but it's not completely clear-cut, at least in my opinion, that the changes under consideration actually relate to reward-seeking, addict-like behaviour and aren't simply, say, a lack of sexual development due to being single.

They found a variety of different features in their test subjects (actual anatomical differences, differences in activity level within the caudate, differences in interconnectedness between pudamen and caudate...) and saw these were strongly correlated with level of pornography use, on the basis of addiction. However, there were some people in the study who used alcohol in a mildly problematic way. They showed only a r = ~0.25 (weak positive correlation) with porn usage. That strikes me as pretty inconsistent—if these are pathways strongly implicated in addictive behaviour, why didn't the drunks line up more neatly with their data? They don't mention alcoholism again in the discussion, except to draw parallels between porn usage and various forms of drug usage, and to suggest psychiatrists should ask about porn usage.

Stats

Study Finds Porn Exposure Associated With Smaller Brain Region 211

New submitter Bodhammer (559311) writes "German researchers looked at the brains of 64 men between the ages of 21 and 45 and found that one brain region (the striatum, linked to reward processing), was smaller in the brains of porn watchers, and that a specific part of the same region is also less activated when exposed to more pornography." While it's tempting to cast blame, "the study doesn't confirm whether watching porn causes the changes, or whether people with a certain brain type are inherently more apt to tune into X-rated content." The study's abstract is available; the paper itself is pay-walled.
Space

ISEE-3 Satellite Is Back Under Control 56

brindafella writes: "Over the last two days, the (Reboot Project for the International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) satellite has successfully commanded ISEE-3 from Earth, using signals transmitted from the Aricebo Observatory. Signals were also received by cooperating dishes: the 21-meter dish located at Kentucky's Morehead State University Space Science Center; the 20-meter dish antenna in Bochum Observatory, Germany, operated by AMSAT Germany; and SETI's Allen Telescope Array, California. ISEE-3 was launched in 1978, and last commanded in 1999 by NASA. On May 15, 2014, the project reached its crowdfunding goal of US$125,000, which will cover the costs of writing the software to communicate with the probe, searching through the NASA archives for the information needed to control the spacecraft, and buying time on the dish antennas. The project then set a 'stretch goal' of $150,000, which it also met with a final total of $159,502 raised. The goal is to be able to command the spacecraft to fire its engines to enter an Earth orbit, and then be usable for further space exploration. This satellite does not even have a computer; it is all 'hard-wired.'"

Comment Re:More likely Cyborg tech will end humans by 2064 (Score 1) 121

I guess you missed this article from two days ago, then? (The classic "mystery" in neural nets is how they distribute weights during learning, the answer to which is "rarely better than a human would, and according to the algorithm they train by.") I know you saw this one; you commented on it. Or perhaps you were talking about computer-automated proofs? Those aren't sophisticated, merely long-winded; the result of applying simple propositional logic over and over again.

If we had algorithms that were actually capable of exceeding human comprehension in a meaningful way—and not just outpacing or outlasting us at regression and tree search—the world would be a much different and more exciting place. It is very unlikely we will have AGI until the human brain is almost fully understood, simply because we don't know what direction we really need to be pushing in. Given that there's now evidence that the brain's neurons could be DNA computers, that definitely has a long way to go.

Comment Re: Lol... (Score 1) 329

Now that's just plainly overly generalized; "theft of services" is an entirely real thing and may not involve anything tangible; the most obvious business example is refusing to pay a consultant. In the case of private MMO servers, this isn't happening: the client, protocol, and server content are already paid for, after all, so what is done is definitely infringement, but there are definitely still kinds of intangible theft.
Communications

Take a Picture: Snapchat Settles With FTC Over "Dissapearing" Claims 51

The New York Times is one of many outlets reporting that Snapchat has agreed to settle with the FTC about the gap between promises made about the company's "disappearing" communications system and reality. "The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday said Snapchat had agreed to settle charges that the company was deceiving users about the ephemeral nature of the photos and video messages sent through its service. The messages were significantly less private than the company had said, the commission said. In marketing the service, Snapchat has said that its messages “disappear forever.” But in its complaint, the commission said the messages, often called snaps, can be saved in several ways. The commission said that users can save a message by using a third-party app, for example, or employ simple workarounds that allow users to take a screenshot of messages without detection." Besides the monetary side of the settlement (details of which are promised soon on the FTC's site), the company has agreed to operate for the next 20 years with special supervision of a new privacy program; it seems a little optimistic as a timeframe for any social-media related business. Here are the FTC's charges (PDF).

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