Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
AI

Submission + - A computer that learns the rules of a game by watching you play (extremetech.com) 1

MrSeb writes: "A Parisian researcher, ukasz Kaiser, who has a love for logic, games, and computer algorithms, has created a computer system that can learn the rules board games — Breakthrough, Connect 4, Gomoku, and Tic-tac-toe — by watching you play. Kaiser feeds videos of winning games, losing games, and illegal moves into the system, and the software then algorithmically generates the the logical rules of the game. Kaiser has compared the generated rules against the actual rules, and they match exactly. Next up: More complex games, such as Chess."

Submission + - New climate report...we have been in cooling phase for 2000 years (sciencedaily.com)

bricko writes: "An international team that includes scientists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has published a reconstruction of the climate in northern Europe over the last 2,000 years based on the information provided by tree-rings. Professor Dr. Jan Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC.

In so doing, the researchers have been able for the first time to precisely demonstrate that the long-term trend over the past two millennia has been towards climatic cooling.

We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low," says Esper. "Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today's climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods." The new study has been published in the journalNature Climate Change."

Software

Submission + - Indoor navigation on your smartphone, using the Earth's magnetic field (extremetech.com)

MrSeb writes: "Researchers from the University of Oulu in Finland has created an indoor navigation system (IPS) that uses the Earth’s innate magnetic field to ascertain your position — just like a homing pigeon or spiny lobster. According to IndoorAtlas, the company spun off by the university to market and sell the tech, its system has an accuracy of between 0.1 and 2 meters. The Finnish IPS technology is ingenious in its simplicity: Basically, every square inch of Earth emits a magnetic field — and this field is then modulated by man-made concrete and steel structures. With a magnetometer (compass), which every modern smartphone has, you can first create a magnetic field map — and then use that map to navigate the shopping mall, underground garage, airport, etc. Compared to most other IPSes, which require thousands of WiFi or Bluetooth base stations to achieve comparable accuracy, IndoorAtlas' infrastructure-free approach sounds rather awesome."
DRM

Submission + - Full history of video DRM in timeline format (opensource.com)

caseyb89 writes: Video DRM has a long history, starting with the Communications Act of 1934. Our technology has come a long way since then, but we're still fighting the same battles of what constitutes copyright infringement. This timeline details the complete history of video DRM, and is part 2 of a DRM series. The first part is a timeline of music DRM. What do you think is the next step for DRM?
GUI

Submission + - Ubuntu Still Aims For Wayland

jones_supa writes: While there's still more than one month until the Ubuntu 12.10 feature freeze, Ubuntu developers continue to work towards their tight schedule of having Wayland serve as the compositor for the Quantal Quetzal release due out in October. Canonical's intends to provide smooth transitions from boot to shutdown. Wayland is also used for session switching and other operations, avoiding traditional VT switching, providing a consistent monitor layout, using the greeter as the lock screen, ensuring that locked sessions are actually secure from displaying, and showing the greeter while the session loads. Phoronix remains skeptical about Ubuntu making the deadline.

Comment Re:Another Best Thing Every. Amazing. (Score 1) 116

Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Displays

Sure, we could go to four displays next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, three worked out pretty well, and four is the next number after three. So let's play it safe. Let's make a brighter backlight and call it the Mach3SuperTurbo HUD. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!

--James M. Kilts CEO and President, The Gillette Company

Comment Re:No. (Score 3, Interesting) 648

It won't slow "cord cutting" to make cable subscriptions more attractive, it'll just lead to people not using Hulu,

I 100% agree. I've had Comcast service for the last 2 years after moving out to the fringe. Last month, after three iterations of the "discount-expires / I-cancel / Comcast-reoffers-discount / I-reneg" charade, I cut the cord. The mental exercise of remembering the offer's expiration date and then rehashing that cycle totally overshadowed what was my already dwindling viewership. Aside from "Walking Dead", the only other channel I hit was Discovery -- and even then maybe twice a week. Netflix Instant Watch on the Roku / iPad coupled with DVD's for the kids give us plenty to watch.

However, the wife and I were talking just this morning about signing up for Hulu. The price and convenience of it are a no-brainer compared to traditional cable. But now that I hear about this, I think I'll reneg...and not feel shameful about this one.

Good luck, Hulu.

Comment Re:Put them to work (Score 2) 1054

The problem isn't the outrage, it's that it's aimed at useless targets.

Here in the US, I believe we are seeing the result of not having an identifiable enemy in most people's recent memory -- or at least, not an enemy that poses an existential threat to the ordinary citizen. Generations before us had readily discernible targets in the Nazis/Communists/Fascists of the world. Today, we hear an echo of that from the right-side of political spectrum in regard to fundamentalist Islam. However, that's my premise: the vast majority of our "enemies" today are faceless ideologies.

I believe the instinctual pulls of self-preservation and tribalism have remained, but have been directed internally. For example, I live in a largely prosperous area. The first- and second-hand accounts I've experienced of someone threatening to "call CPS" for the purpose of dissuading another's behaviour are astounding. People are misdirecting their inherent aggressions at their neighbors. The relative comforts many people enjoy also means they have plenty of time to judge the actions of others. If someone's behaviour doesn't fit with their model, then they find a way to punish that individual.

The more laws, rules and regulations there are one the books, the easier it is to incriminate a person. That means these useless targets are easy prey.

Slashdot Top Deals

"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb." -- Spaceballs

Working...