Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Giant Bust Of Edward Snowden Erected In A Brooklyn Park (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A giant sculpture of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden was installed in a Brooklyn park early Monday morning. A group of unidentified artists wearing yellow construction vests erected the 100-pound, bronze patina bust atop a stone column at the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park before dawn Monday. On the bottom of the column, capital letters spell out Snowdenâ(TM)s name in a font similar to one often used on war memorials.

Submission + - Planes Without Pilots

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: John Markoff writes in the NYT that in the aftermath of the co-pilot crashing a Germanwings plane into a mountain, aviation experts are beginning to wonder if human pilots are really necessary aboard commercial planes. Advances in sensor technology, computing and artificial intelligence are making human pilots less necessary than ever in the cockpit and government agencies are already experimenting with replacing the co-pilot, perhaps even both pilots on cargo planes, with robots or remote operators. What the Germanwings crash “has done has elevated the question of should there or not be ways to externally control commercial aircraft,” says Mary Cummings. NASA is exploring a related possibility: moving the co-pilot out of the cockpit on commercial flights, and instead using a single remote operator to serve as co-pilot for multiple aircraft. In this scenario, a ground controller might operate as a dispatcher managing a dozen or more flights simultaneously. It would be possible for the ground controller to “beam” into individual planes when needed and to land a plane remotely in the event that the pilot became incapacitated — or worse. “Could we have a single-pilot aircraft with the ability to remotely control the aircraft from the ground that is safer than today’s systems?" asks Cummings. "The answer is yes.”

Automating that job may save money. But will passengers ever set foot on plane piloted by robots, or humans thousands of miles from the cockpit? In written testimony submitted to the Senate last month, the Air Line Pilots Association warned, “It is vitally important that the pressure to capitalize on the technology not lead to an incomplete safety analysis of the aircraft and operations.” The association defended the unique skills of a human pilot: “A pilot on board an aircraft can see, feel, smell or hear many indications of an impending problem (PDF) and begin to formulate a course of action before even sophisticated sensors and indicators provide positive indications of trouble.” Not all of the scientists and engineers believe that increasingly sophisticated planes will always be safer planes. "Technology can have costs of its own,” says Amy Pritchett. “If you put more technology in the cockpit, you have more technology that can fail.”

Submission + - Snowden statue in NY (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A statue of Snowden showed up in Brooklyn. As quickly as it showed up, it was even more quickly removed. Apart from this, the bust was also hidden by a blue tarp so that New Yorkers do not get any ideas.
  Still, it is nice to see civil disobedience did not completely die in this nation.

Submission + - Your Porn Is Watching You 2

Submitted by merbs
merbs writes: Thirty million Americans regularly watch porn online. That’s a lot more than fess up to it, even in anonymous surveys: In 2013, just 12 percent of people asked copped to watching internet porn at all. But thanks to pervasive online tracking and browser fingerprinting, the brazen liars of America may not have a say in whether their porn habits stay secret. Porn watchers everywhere are being tracked, and if software engineer Brett Thomas is right, it would be easy to out them, along with an extensive list of every clip they’ve viewed.

Submission + - Why I Ditched My Credit Cards for Cash (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "About three years ago, I gave up my credit cards for cold-hard-cash. And not just any cash, but moola with makeup. That's right, I have started to legally rubber stamp dollar bills with messages like "Not To Be Used For Bribing Politicians" in order to build grassroots demand for common sense reforms to get big money out of politics and restore a government of, for, and by the people." --Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's

Submission + - Neural Modularity Helps Organisms Evolve to Learn New Skills without Forgetting (youtube.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A long-standing goal in artificial intelligence (AI) is creating computational brain models (neural networks) that learn what to do in new situations. An obstacle is that agents typically learn new skills only by losing previously acquired skills. Here we test whether such forgetting is reduced by evolving modular neural networks, meaning networks with many distinct subgroups of neurons. Modularity intuitively should help because learning can be selectively turned on only in the module learning the new task. We confirm this hypothesis: modular networks have higher overall performance because they learn new skills faster while retaining old skills more. Our results suggest that one benefit of modularity in natural animal brains may be allowing learning without forgetting.

Submission + - Chinese internet addicts pay for digital detox in military-style bootcamps

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: Last year, China recognized internet addiction as an official disorder. Since then, over 6,000 patients have submitted themselves for treatment, after some spent up to 14 hours a day online

And as these amazing pictures show, dealing with it is serious. The Daxing Internet Addiction Treatment Centre (IATC) is a military-style bootcamp nestled in the suburbs of Bejing.

The young men that enter its doors are subjected to a strict military regime of exercise, medication and solitary confinement. Any kind of electronic gadgetry is completely banned. Additionally, patients are frequently subjected psychiatric assessments and brain scans to make sure they stay on the straight and narrow.

And if you're thinking it's just an extreme reaction by the Chinese, think again. The western world is following suit. Last year, a man was treated in the US after spending 18 hours a day using Google Glass.

Despite it's recent official classification, Is internet addition a real disorder? Or is it a red herring masking depression and escapism? And to make things more indeterminate, Isn't more and more time online the inevitable future?

And the concept is gaining steam, the first Internet Congress on Internet Addiction Disorders was held in Milan in early 2014.

Submission + - This Is Big: A Robo-Car Just Drove Across the Country (wired.com)

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: AN AUTONOMOUS CAR just drove across the country.

Nine days after leaving San Francisco, a blue car packed with tech from a company you’ve probably never heard of rolled into New York City after crossing 15 states and 3,400 miles to make history. The car did 99 percent of the driving on its own, yielding to the carbon-based life form behind the wheel only when it was time to leave the highway and hit city streets.

This amazing feat, by the automotive supplier Delphi, underscores the great leaps this technology has taken in recent years, and just how close it is to becoming a part of our lives. Yes, many regulatory and legislative questions must be answered, and it remains to be seen whether consumers are ready to cede control of their cars, but the hardware is, without doubt, up to the task.

Submission + - Is the World Ready for the "Schrödinger's Physicist" Experiment? (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: Imagine a physicist sitting in a chamber with a gun pointed directly at her head.

Every few seconds, the spin direction of a random particle in the room is measured. If the particle is spinning one direction then the gun goes off and the physicist dies. If the particle is spinning in the opposite direction, there's just a clicking sound and the physicist survives.

She has a 50/50 chance of surviving, right?

It might not be that simple if we live in a multiverse — the idea that multiple universes, apart from the one we call home, exist.

This scenario with the physicist and the gun is the start of a famous thought experiment called "quantum suicide," and it's one way for physicists to consider if we really are living in just one of many (and potentially infinitely many) universes.

This is different from the Schrödinger's cat experiment because this time, the observer is continuously integrated into the experiment, and plays an integral part which contributes to the conclusion.

Her survival is tied to a quantum probability, so she'll be both dead and alive at once — just in different universes. If a new universe splits off every time a particle is measured and the gun either fires or doesn't, then in one of those universes, the physicist will end up surviving, say 50 particle measurements. You can think of this as flipping a coin 50 times in a row. You have an extremely low likelihood of getting heads each of those 50 times — less than a 1 quadrillion chance, but it is possible.

And if it happens, that's enough for the physicist to conclude that the multiverse is real, and effectively she becomes immortal in the universe in which the gun never goes off. But she also becomes the only person who knows that parallel universes exist.

Comment #1 Productivity Boost: No Distractions (Score 2) 261

A clean quiet workarea with no visual or auditory distractions.

All I want to do is code all day long.

All you want me to do is code all day long.

Then, you bombard me with people walking by, talking around me, interupting me, IM'ing me, it never ends...

And I get NOTHING done... do you get it?

No, you never will. You manage by interupting me...

Submission + - Senator calls for The Anarchist Cookbook to be "Removed from the Internet" (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In the wake of the Thursday arrest of two women accused of attempting to build a bomb, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote on her website that the 1971 book on bomb making, which may have aided the terror suspects in some small way, should be "banned from the Internet."

The senator seems to fail to realize that not only has The Anarchist Cookbook been in print for decades it's sold on Amazon!, but also has openly circulated online for nearly the same period of time. In short, removing it from the Internet would be impossible.

The sooner these ignorant fossils are put out to pasture the better. It would be nice if Leahy, Hatch, McConnell and Feinstein followed Reid's lead.

Submission + - Tech Billionaires Want Jesse Jackson to 'Get The Facts Straight' on H-1B Visas

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Let's get the facts straight [on H-1B workers]," commands the Mythbusters-themed popup at FWD.us, which seems designed to refute Jesse Jackson's earlier claims that foreign high-tech workers are taking American jobs. What's really holding back Americans from jobs is the lack of foreign tech workers with H-1B visas, according to a new research brief entitled The H-1B Employment Effect , which is being promoted by Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC and Steve Ballmer's Partnership for a New American Economy Action Fund. One wonders what Jackson will make of the report, which uses a photo of what appears to be a young black male that occupies most of the first page of the research report to drive home its point. Curiously, a Google image search reveals that the photo of what one might assume is a U.S.-born worker who owes his job to an H-1B worker is identical to one gracing the website of a UK memory distributor, except it's been changed from color to black-and-white, giving it a civil rights movement-era vibe. Hey, one Photoshopped picture is worth a thousand words when you're trying to make a point, right?

Submission + - Unitary Software Patent challenged at the Belgian Constitutional Court (esoma.org)

Submitted by zoobab
zoobab writes: The Unitary Patent for Europe is being challenged at the Belgian Constitutional Court. One of the plaintiffs, Benjamin Henrion, is a fifteen-year campaigner against software patents in Europe. He says: "The Unitary Patent is the third major attempt to legalize software patents in Europe. The captive European Patent Court will become the Eastern District of Texas when it comes to software patent disputes in Europe. As happened in America, the concentration of power will force up legal costs, punish small European companies, and benefit large patent holders."

Submission + - Is this ET? Mystery of strange radio bursts from space (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: Telescopes have been picking up so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) since 2001. They last just a few milliseconds and erupt with about as much energy as the sun releases in a month. Ten have been detected so far, most recently in 2014, when the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia, caught a burst in action for the first time. The others were found by sifting through data after the bursts had arrived at Earth. No one knows what causes them, but the brevity of the bursts means their source has to be small – hundreds of kilometres across at most – so they can't be from ordinary stars. And they seem to come from far outside the galaxy.

To calculate how far the bursts have come, astronomers use a concept called the dispersion measure. Each burst covers a range of radio frequencies, as if the whole FM band were playing the same song. But electrons in space scatter and delay the radiation, so that higher frequency waves make it across space faster than lower frequency waves. The more space the signal crosses, the bigger the difference, or dispersion measure, between the arrival time of high and low frequencies – and the further the signal has travelled.

Michael Hippke of the Institute for Data Analysis in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany, and John Learned at the University of Hawaii in Manoa found that all 10 bursts' dispersion measures are multiples of a single number: 187.5 (see chart). This neat line-up, if taken at face value, would imply five sources for the bursts all at regularly spaced distances from Earth, billions of light-years away.

They claim there is a 5 in 10,000 probability that the line-up is coincidence. "If the pattern is real," says Learned, "it is very, very hard to explain."

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close