Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Dubious because facts (Score 5, Informative) 182

Marc Rogers disagrees strongly, and poitns at a long list of evidence that make it much more likely that it was a vengeful inside-job badly disguised into a Nork attack for unrelated publicity added-value:
- elements of language that do not fit north-korean lingo
- hardcoded filepaths indicating insider knowledge
- social-network savvyness unlike anything the DPRK ever did
- no mention of The Interview movie until after the possible tie with DPRK was suggested ... and more.

Comment Re:it can be air filled (Score 4, Interesting) 200

Also mind the day duration: the Venus sidereal day is 243 Earth days. That makes for a worse than polar night, solar panel-wise, and that's not even counting the permanent, thick cloud cover. There just is no point in reaching the venusian ground and its lead-melting heat. It's far better to hang in the high atmosphere, well above the sulfuric acid clouds, and loft around in the 200 mph winds, circling the planet every 4 or 5 Earth days.

AI

Economists Say Newest AI Technology Destroys More Jobs Than It Creates 688

HughPickens.com writes: Claire Cain Miller notes at the NY Times that economists long argued that, just as buggy-makers gave way to car factories, technology used to create as many jobs as it destroyed. But now there is deep uncertainty about whether the pattern will continue, as two trends are interacting. First, artificial intelligence has become vastly more sophisticated in a short time, with machines now able to learn, not just follow programmed instructions, and to respond to human language and movement. At the same time, the American work force has gained skills at a slower rate than in the past — and at a slower rate than in many other countries. Self-driving vehicles are an example of the crosscurrents. Autonomous cars could put truck and taxi drivers out of work — or they could enable drivers to be more productive during the time they used to spend driving, which could earn them more money. But for the happier outcome to happen, the drivers would need the skills to do new types of jobs.

When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure. Perhaps the most worrisome development is how poorly the job market is already functioning for many workers. More than 16 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960s; 30 percent of women in this age group are not working, up from 25 percent in the late 1990s. For those who are working, wage growth has been weak, while corporate profits have surged. "We're going to enter a world in which there's more wealth and less need to work," says Erik Brynjolfsson. "That should be good news. But if we just put it on autopilot, there's no guarantee this will work out."
Google

ODF Support In Google Drive 40

An anonymous reader writes: Google's Chris DiBona told a London conference last week that ODF support was coming next year, but today the Google Drive team unexpectedly launched support for all three of the main variants — including long-absent Presentation files. You can now simply open ODT, ODS and ODP files in Drive with no fuss. It lacks support for comments and changes but at least it shows progress towards full support of the international document standard, something conspicuously missing for many years.

Comment Re: Really? (Score 1) 772

Of course Hitler won. He won the moment the same antihumanist ideas that formed most of his ideology were also adopted by your very own top social class and government executives back in the 1920s and 1930s.

Look at the names of the founders and forefront proponents of every "population control" organisation that arised back then, and read what they wrote, it's all the same: the focal point is about exterminating and/or sterilizing the "genetically inferior races" and the "feeble-minded", at an industrial scale, in order to "improve" the human race "stock" and preserve its natural environment from overuse and exhaustion.

Then look at the conditions enforced on third-world countries in exchange for foreign US aid and world bank aid back in the 60s and 70s: programs of mass (often forced) sterilisations for the poor populations, that were done in unsanitary conditions.

The nazis have won, and today they're in charge of most of your foreign aid programs and environmental protection programs, they have been exterminating for decades, they still are at it right now.

Comment Re:No, it's not even possible (Score 1) 181

Your mind is a process that exists through a tangible substrate. Therefore it can be reproduced artificially.

I am not saying that souls do not exist, I'm saying that souls actually exist in objective reality as complex bundles of (neg)entropic processes, that arise from the right sort and amount of physical phenomenon.

It's only a matter of time before we can measure, copy, move and alter them.

Comment Re:She's _4_ (Score 1) 584

Maybe the father can give his daughter examples of actual princesses' lives and deeds, since it seems to be such a spontaneous center of interest for her. Like the bios of Grace Kelly, Diana, Margaret of Snowdon, Beatrice of York, etc.

Full disclosure: my 5 year old niece is a prime piece of Disney'dest princess-wannabe, and I regularly take great delight in trolling her with facts about real princes and princesses, and alternate versions of her favorite stories.

Education

FBI Seizes Los Angeles Schools' iPad Documents 229

An anonymous reader writes: The Los Angeles Unified School District had a bold (and expensive) plan to outfit its students with top-of-the-line technology: its 650,000 students will be given Apple iPads to use for school work. The cost? $1 billion. Unfortunately for them, the project has been plagued with problems. Now, the FBI has seized 20 boxes of documents regarding the district's procurement practices and confirmed an investigation. "Hundreds of students initially given the iPads last school year found ways to bypass security installations, downloading games and freely surfing the Web. Teachers complained they were not properly trained to instruct students with the new technology. And questions were raised after emails were disclosed showing that then-Superintendent John Deasy had been in communication with vendors Apple and Pearson before the contracts were put to bid."
Canada

Married Woman Claims Facebook Info Sharing Created Dating Profile For Her 189

jenningsthecat writes A happily married Ontario woman was shocked and dismayed last January to discover that she had an active account with dating site Zoosk.com. Mari Sherkin saw a pop-up ad on Facebook for Zoosk, but wasn't interested, so she "clicked on the X to close it. At least I thought I did." She immediately began to receive messages from would-be Zoosk suitors in her Facebook mailbox. When she had a look on Zoosk she was horrified to find a dating profile with her Facebook picture, name, and postal code. Zoosk denies ever setting up profiles in this way, yet their terms of service explicitly allow them to do it, and there are apparently several Facebook pages with complaints of similar occurrences.
PlayStation (Games)

Customers Creating Fake Amazon Pages To Get Cheap Electronics At Walmart 287

turkeydance writes People are reportedly creating fake Amazon pages to show fake prices on electronics and other items. In the most heavily publicized cases, Walmart was reportedly duped into selling $400 PlayStation 4 consoles for under $100. From the article: "The company announced on Nov. 13 that it would price-match select online retailers, including Amazon.com. However, any Amazon member with a registered selling account can create authentic looking pages and list items 'for sale' online. Consumers need only take a screen capture of the page and show it to a cashier at checkout in order to request the price match."

Slashdot Top Deals

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!

Working...