Behavioral experiments like this are relatively straightforward to plan and run. The hard part is to explain the result, and the reasons are not always what you'd expect on first glance, often due to confounding variables that you've inadvertently changed.

It's also worth noting that the news release throws in a quote about altruism, but the original paper's authors were careful not to go there.

For example, reading this carefully, it's clear that the rat frees its cagemate and then goes for the chocolate. It's not a binary choice between the two. Why does it do that? Perhaps it's hidden empathy/altruism circuitry. Or maybe the rat's just afraid of what its cagemate will do if it eats all the food and then the trapped rat gets out. Contrary to what most people think, domesticated rats are very much like domesticated dogs in terms of temperament... very social animals, usually with a playful temperament, but can also be very territorial and assertive. And territorial fighting usually occurs over shared, limited resources, like food. (I will say, chocolate is a good choice. Rats love chocolate. Some of our rats will eat 30 - 40 M&Ms in a half-hour experiment. Not bad for an animal weighing 300 grams.)

Maybe it is altruism or empathy. But true altruism is doing something good and expecting nothing in return, not a pain avoidance strategy.

Ultimately, everyone agrees that open sharing of research data funded by the taxpayers would be A Good Thing(TM). The problem is: how do you persuade people to actually do it. Much how things like advanced safety features on cars, free college tuition, and taxes on big banks sound like great ideas, until you look at what it will actually cost to implement. Not just "cost" in terms of money for infrastructure development, data storage, and support, but in terms of persuading an entire culture to change their workflow.

In our lab, we already spend an extraordinary amount of time on administrative tasks only indirectly related to our research. Adding in a mandatory data sharing task and fielding questions from random people who wanted to use it would be a serious additional chore. Then there's the embarrassment aspect... we actually had a project a couple months ago where there was another group doing an experiment that we wanted to do, and they had software already written. So we thought, "great, we'll just ask them for the code". So we fired off an email... and after a couple weeks we finally got a reply to the effect of "this is actually my first program, and I don't feel comfortable sharing it." So we had to spend 2-3 months writing our own version to do exactly the same thing.

Not only that, but with reduced CO2 emissions as a direct result of fewer spinning hard drives drawing power from the electrical grid and the increased albedo from all that data being stored in clouds, we've also solved global warming! Go team!

And what, pray tell, do you imagine the cloud stores data on? Turtles?

(emphasis mine)

Yes, I'm glad we have rediscovered what it means to find an "average". [facepalm]

As long as you don't need a camera that fits in your pocket, a low-end DSLR is probably exactly what you're looking for. Even a lowly $400 Nikon D3100 has a sensor size and resolution that camera fanatics could only dream about 15 years ago. And if that's out of your price range, you can do much better shopping refurb or used equipment (I paid ~ $250 for a D40x two years ago when I was in a similar situation as you).

Why DSLR? Because it (1) has a big sensor and (2) compatibility with hundreds of lenses. Bigger sensor = more light captured = easier to take good photos with less skill. And even the low end Nikon lenses give pretty good results with the new VR (vibration reduction) feature. Seriously, my photo quality went way up when I ditched the cheap pocket cam. I'll never go back.

Get an 18-55mm lens (probably will come with the camera) and a 55-200mm lens (around $120 online), and you'll be set for just about anything except low-light and indoor sports photography.

In terms of brands, I went with Nikon just because I was familiar with them, but the Canon stuff is functionally equivalent.

Gee, it's almost enough to make you believe that regulators can do their job once in a while. Maybe the FCC can run training seminars for the SEC...

Regardless, it's the right decision. Mergers of this scale are bad for everyone except one of the two CEOs. One guy gets a promotion. Meanwhile customers lose choice, the market loses competition, employees lose jobs (when they become redundant), and shareholders lose their investment (when half get bought out).

And that's before you factor in the (rightly) indignant T-Mobile customers, most of whom have sworn a solemn oath to do business with anyone but AT&T.

Not that I disagree with you on whether citizens should have access, but has this actually ever happened? Not just once (I'm sure it's happened somewhere), but on a regular basis?

It's neat to think that this is possible, but things like "most wanted" lists have been around a long, long time without producing very many tangible results. Trying to do it in real-time is even less likely, even before considering how few people are likely to be listening to police scanners at a given time vs. seeing a most wanted list on the news or at the post office. I don't work in law enforcement, but I get the impression that when criminals are caught, it's usually either good detective work or having their personal information looked up for an unrelated office (i.e. pulled over for speeding six months after robbing the bank).

I'd be surprised if other large commercial destinations (malls, amusement parks, sporting venues, etc) aren't using this tech already. It's not like these two malls invented it themselves, and even if they're the first to use it, it must have been beta tested somewhere.

I think we can agree that the "we won't be looking at singular shoppers" reassurance is completely ridiculous. As though there's some algorithm to digitally count the devices on a network and track their locations without, umm, actually counting them? The only question is how long the data is stored.

At the same time, even opting out now is pointless, as we've established that the phone company, the police, and the FBI all have access to your phone's location tracking information. It's a bit late to worry about whether or not to use things like Apple's "Find My Friends" app. Best to avoid owning a cell phone altogether if you're worried about being tracked, or at least leave it behind (and turn it off) when you don't want to be followed.

It's neat that amateur radio still has a niche in today's world, even though these figures are less impressive when you consider (1) population growth in the US over the last four decades and (2) getting a radio license now is much easier than it used to be.

These days, no Morse code knowledge is required for Tech level, and many clubs offer a "get your license in one day" class for cramming on the published question pool and then doing a brain dump into the exam before you forget everything.

Really, if you have a free Saturday and you've ever thought for more than 10 seconds about getting your radio license, there's no reason not to do it.

Yes, if only there were a single tablet on the market that didn't require rooting to do such complicated tasks as web browsing, reading PDFs, or even a single SSH client.

Look, I'm all in favor of individuals having control of their devices. But I'm pretty sure there's a reason nobody sells a rooted tablet that does exactly the same things as everyone else's tablets. If you can't even answer why you need root access, don't expect to find a product that will.

I just don't see this working out for well for Facebook. History is littered with examples of successful software companies that thought their brilliance extended to hardware. It almost never works out; they inevitably rediscover not only that hardware is an order of magnitude more challenging to get to market than software, but customers are much less forgiving about flaws and bugs when they can't be fixed with a simple update.

But in this case especially, I don't understand what kind of core assets Facebook can leverage on their own device that they're not getting elsewhere. With Google at least it made sense that they didn't want their search platform ignored amidst a sea of apps (though in many ways the world is still going that way, even on Android). But what exactly can a "Facebook phone" offer that an iOS/Android device with the Facebook app can't?

Clearly they think they have an answer to that question, or at least they're worried enough about the diluted (and deluded, for that matter) social network landscape to make themselves believe they've found one.

I've always thought that "screen time" is a ridiculous metric for kids. As though watching the Disney Channel, writing C++, playing Halo, and Skyping with friends/family are all the same thing. And it only gets worse as LCD panels become cheaper (and thus more prevalent in our lives). Are we going to count sitting in the family minivan playing with the GPS on the way to school as screen time? How about reading textbooks on the family iPad?

What really matters, of course, is the engagement of the parents to set up, support, and reinforce the environment of their children. I have no doubt that many parents simply hand their child their iPhone to distract them when they're busy with other things. Too many parents don't burden themselves with getting involved in the choices their children make, and then usually regret it later or try to fix it in artificial ways (see: "screen time"). At the same time, there are parents who teach or enable their kids to do great things with technology, like film and edit home movies, or write simple iOS/Android apps, or build simple circuits.

The parents matter. More specifically their time, effort, and creativity matters. Friends, other family, choice of school, and other available resources matter. The "amount of screen time" doesn't matter. Stop worrying about it, and start worrying about the choices that do.

Here in the US all our news comes from the UK from hacking cell phone voicemail systems.

I think a lot of news outlets do themselves a disservice in their effort to push the latest news out the door by throwing together a couple sentences (or worse, tweets) and calling it a "story".

At least when I read a news article, I'm looking for context (what's the backstory?), significance (what's the important new development?) and perspective (what do other people think?) There's a rush sometimes to gravitate to significance, minimize context, and forget about perspective altogether. I think that leads to a lot of our news-driven culture where everything seems to be over-quoted and hyper-republished without a healthy dose of skepticism.

I generally support keeping the story "live", up to a point. I think it's wrong to go back and edit a story that's more than 24 hours old, and while it's best if new developments are integrated into the main body, there needs to be a "changes to this story" log. And preferably not at the beginning. Hard to count the number of times I've seen a story on some blog start with a half-dozen lines like "UPDATE 3: Joe has contacted MGIS, they deny that they didn't release the specs on the TSR-5100 to the FCC". (Again, context is important).