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Submission + - The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos is Probably Superintelligent Robots

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: If and when we finally encounter aliens, they probably won’t look like little green men, or spiny insectoids. It’s likely they won’t be biological creatures at all, but rather, advanced robots that outstrip our intelligence in every conceivable way.
Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial. In her paper “Alien Minds," written for a forthcoming NASA publication, Schneider describes why alien life forms are likely to be synthetic, and how such creatures might think.

Submission + - Quantum physics just got less complicated (phys.org)

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: From phys.org:
Here's a nice surprise: quantum physics is less complicated than we thought. An international team of researchers has proved that two peculiar features of the quantum world previously considered distinct are different manifestations of the same thing. The result is published 19 December in Nature Communications.
Patrick Coles, Jedrzej Kaniewski, and Stephanie Wehner made the breakthrough while at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore. They found that 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum 'uncertainty principle' in disguise, reducing two mysteries to one.

Comment Who is pushing what agenda? (Score 1) 1

These edit do appear to be legitimate corrections

The report is called '''Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program''' yet the wiki editor has miss named it
"Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture"

Also under Wikipedia's own rules the articles should be NPV and controversial terms backed by legitimate quotes and citations.

Submission + - UK Government seeks to extend snooping on public (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Martin Spamer
Martin Spamer writes: Theresa May the current UK Home Secretary (the cabinet minister responsible for policing) is attempting to force through a new law that will require ISPs to record the identity of users of each IP address and hand those details over to police on demand.

It is claimed this is necessary for national security, despite the fact the vast majority of the 570,000 data requests made last year did not involve any national security issues.

Stake your claim for internet freedom now

Submission + - NASA offering contracts to encourage Asteroid Mining

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two private companies, Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, have received contracts from NASA to study asteroid redirection and will pursue their plans of asteroid mining. From the article: "Deep Space Industries is planning to build a number of dense spacecrafts called FireFlies, and they plan on sending the satellites on one way missions to gather information about the density, shape, composition and size of an asteroid. They also have plans to build a spacecraft called Dragonfly, which has the purpose of catching asteroids. The asteroid material will be collected and returned to Earth by 'Harvesters'. Planetary Resources, on the other hand, plans to build a number of middle sized and small telescopes that will be capable of examining asteroids near the planet Earth for economic potential. They already have the telescopes Arkyd 300, Arkyd 200 and the Arkyd 100, each having its own specific systems."

Submission + - Open source and Internet of Things can save public sector millions (cio.co.uk)

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Open source software and the Internet of Things are two of the disruptive approaches which can save the public sector during the UK government's austerity measures and lay the ground to deliver next generation digital services, Camden Council CIO John Jackson believes.

Local government organisations are approaching a critical tipping point which could save the public sector and the taxpayer billions, Jackson said.

Camden has to save £150 million between 2012 and 2018 from its bottom line while at the same time delivering fundamental transformation to tackle inequality, foster economic growth and deliver citizen centric services, Jackson explained as he outlined the council's challenges.

"But there's lots of cynicism around open source and the art of the possible, particularly in the CIO community who want to buy things off the shelf and are too worried about security, Jackson said."

"We need to harness the potential of open source. Don't outsource IT, crowdsource it."

Submission + - EU considers splitting up Google to stop search abuse (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by DW100
DW100 writes: MEPs in Europe want to split Google up to curb its apparent abuse of the search market, although they have no real authority to force Google into any such measures. The move seems to really be a case of putting pressure on the new competition chief to find a way to, in turn, put pressure on Google to come up with search concessions that actually meet its concerns.

Submission + - Robot makes people feel like a ghost is nearby (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In 2006, cognitive neuroscientist Olaf Blanke of the University of Geneva in Switzerland was testing a patient’s brain functions before her epilepsy surgery when he noticed something strange. Every time he electrically stimulated the region of her brain responsible for integrating different sensory signals from the body, the patient would look back behind her back as if a person was there, even when she knew full well that no one was actually present. Now, with the help of robots, Blanke and colleagues have not only found a neurological explanation for this illusion, but also tricked healthy people into sensing “ghosts,” they report online today in Current Biology. The study could help explain why schizophrenia patients sometimes hallucinate that aliens control their movements.

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