66398391
submission
superboj writes:
"From everything I can find, Mars One doesn’t appear to be in any way qualified to carry off the biggest, most complex, most audacious, and most dangerous exploration mission in all of human history. They don’t have the money to do it. 200,000 people didn’t actually apply. I wouldn’t classify it exactly as a scam—but it seems to be, at best, an amazingly hubristic fantasy."
66195149
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blastboy writes:
By pretty much any logic, Wikipedia shouldn't work: A vast website, built on the labor of volunteers, with very few tangible rewards and a fairly weird hierarchy. So why is it so successful? The site's top-ranking users explain what makes them tick.
62752125
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blastboy writes:
Four years ago notorious troll Andrew "weev" Auernheimer was imprisoned for exposing AT&T's weak security practices. Now he's been released from jail—early, thanks to a technicality—and is back in the game, as offensive as ever, and talking about his time behind bars.
57592529
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blastboy writes:
The symptoms of Morgellons sound terrifying—burning, biting, scratching fibers found in the skin that leave victims frantic, wild and depressed. Is it an infection? Allergies? Alien parasites? In fact, say doctors, it doesn't exist at all.
57456437
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superboj writes:
Everyone wants a piece of Egypt's most famous pharaoh, including the media, the Muslim Brotherhood and even the Mormon church. But while scientists have been trying to excavate his DNA and prove who he was—Egypt's turbulent politics have been making progress hard. Will experts be able to make a major discovery? And what happens if they do?
56806621
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gallifreyan99 writes:
Scientists have spent decades trying to understand and fix social problems like violence and alcoholism, usually focusing on the poor and disadvantaged. But now a small band of researchers is claiming that biology plays a vitally important role—because trauma can change you at a genetic level that gets passed on to kids, grandkids, and perhaps even beyond. Astonishing story.
56641757
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blastboy writes:
“It’s just a tool.” I'd heard this many times before. It contains a modicum of truth, but buries technology’s impacts on our lives, which are never neutral. Often, I asked the person who said it if they thought nuclear weapons were “just a tool.” Humans have always fought, but few would say it doesn’t matter if we fight with sticks, knives, guns, or nuclear weapons." Great essay on Snowden, technology and the problem with how we think of surveillance.
56609781
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superboj writes:
Snowden's revelations about the NSA have us all talking about big data and Big Brother. But this great piece tying together online spying, political repression and the Turkish rebellion argues that we need new metaphors—because our surveillance nightmare is more frightening, and more subtle, than we realize.
56380541
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kalman5 writes:
Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the first amputee in the world to feel sensory rich information — in real-time — with a prosthetic hand wired to nerves in his upper arm. Sørensen could grasp objects intuitively and identify what he was touching while blindfolded.
More (french) on: http://actu.epfl.ch/news/une-p...
56380325
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blastboy writes:
The global population has rocketed from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to more than 7 billion today. But what does that actually mean? Just ask Iran, where the world's biggest boom has been happening— with fertility rates sometimes as high as nine children per woman. It's fuelled revolutions, built armies, put the country under strain, and lots of tough lessons about dealing with overpopulation.
56378339
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Okian Warrior writes:
In a followup to Slashdot's previous article, a federal judge has ordered Rahinah Ibrahim removed from the U.S. government's no-fly list.
Rahinah Ibrahim eventually won the no-fly list ruling after her daughter, a US citizen, was prevented from returning to the country to testify at the trial.
Here's hoping this is the first of many successful challenges to the no-fly list.
56225447
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KentuckyFC writes:
Americans spent $14.2 billion on veterinary care for their pets in 2013—and that doesn’t even include proprietary health diets and food supplements. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat. Factor in the emotional energy we invest in keeping our companion animals healthy, and you’d hope for high confidence in the end results. But when one journalist investigated the science behind the meds being used to treat his aging dog's osteoarthritis, he was in for a nasty surprise. Glucosamine and chondroitin food supplements? Next to useless. Tramadol to kill pain? It's probably just getting dogs high. The one treatment that's been proven to help, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called carprofen, is often left on the shelf because of fears—likely overblown—that it might damage dogs' kidneys. In part, you can blame this sorry state of affairs on a lack of financial incentives for drug companies to run clinical trials on animals. But often, vets aren't paying attention to the studies that have been done. If we want our dogs and cats to receive the best possible medical care, we need to ask our vets some tougher questions about why they think the drugs will work.
56224269
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schwit1 writes:
... most TSA officers I talked to told me they felt the agency’s day-to-day operations represented an abuse of public trust and funds.
56217583
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Nerval's Lobster writes:
Microsoft’s next CEO will be Satya Nadella, if current reports prove accurate. According to Re/code, which drew its information from “numerous sources close to Microsoft,” Nadella could officially assume the role in early February. Meanwhile, anonymous sources speaking to Bloomberg suggested that co-founder Bill Gates could be forced to give up his longtime chairman role. Nadella (again, if confirmed) seems a logical choice for Microsoft. He’s been with the company for more than twenty years, eventually becoming executive vice president of its Cloud and Enterprise division. The enterprise remains a key—perhaps the key—customer segment for Microsoft, especially as its mobile and consumer efforts (excluding the Xbox) have floundered in recent years; in order to retain those business clients, Nadella and his team embarked on the creation of “Cloud OS,” the platform that powers Microsoft’s large-scale cloud services such as SkyDrive, Azure, and Office 365. Under his guidance, Microsoft’s revenue from cloud services has grown by several billion over the past few years, so he’s shown that he can expand a business. In addition, his technical background could afford him a measure of respect from Microsoft’s legions of engineers and developers. But if he’s ultimately tapped for the CEO seat, Nadella faces one of the toughest jobs in the technology industry: not only does he need to craft a plan that will allow Microsoft to grow and prosper in an integrated, holistic manner—he’ll need to do it while guiding the company through the massive internal reorganization initiated by his predecessor, Steve Ballmer.
56193109
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blastboy writes:
The potential upside to getting rid of drivers: "Today car horns are still a leading source of noise pollution in urban centers. India's honking problem is so severe that the response to it—from both activists and government officials—mirrors the response to an actual epidemic. Officials in Peru, meanwhile, began treating honking like a serious crime in 2009, threatening to confiscate the cars of people who honk when they shouldn't.
