Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - FOR THE FIRST TIME, VISIBLE LIGHT FROM AN EXOPLANET DETECTED (popsci.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One does not simply look at an exoplanet. In order to learn more about these space rocks lurking many light years away, researchers have various indirect methods for deciphering their features. Astronomers can examine how the planetâ(TM)s host star wobbles in relation to the globe, to pinpoint the planet's position and mass. Or they can examine the dimming of the star as the planet passes in front, a method known as transit photometry that helps to determine the planetâ(TM)s radius.

Submission + - Carter reveals Russians hacked Pentagon networks (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Pentagon has disclosed that Russian hackers were able to breach one of its secure networks earlier this year, and referred to the attack as a “worrisome” incident. “Earlier this year, the sensors that guard DOD’s unclassified networks detected Russian hackers accessing one of our networks,” said defense secretary Ash Carter yesterday during a speech at Stanford University. Carter warned Russia that the U.S. Department of Defense would retaliate with cyber campaigns should it see fit. “Adversaries should know that our preference for deterrence and our defensive posture don't diminish our willingness to use cyber options if necessary,” said Carter. He added in a prepared statement that the Russian hackers had been able to gain access to an “unclassified network” but had been “quickly identified” by a team of cyberattack experts who managed to block the hackers “within 24 hours.” The cybersecurity response team had quickly analysed the hack patterns and code and identified the intruders as Russian, before “kicking them off the network.”

Submission + - Tractor Software and the DMCA (wired.com)

Submitted by moeinvt
moeinvt writes: From Wired: In a particularly spectacular display of corporate delusion, John Deere—the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker —told the Copyright Office that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code snakes through the DNA of modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”

It’s John Deere’s tractor, folks. You’re just driving it.

Submission + - MIT Developing AI to Better Diagnose Cancer (roboticstrends.com)

Submitted by stowie
stowie writes: Working with Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT has developed a computational model that aims to automatically suggest cancer diagnoses by learning from thousands of data points from past pathology reports. The core idea is a technique called Subgraph Augmented Non-negative Tensor Factorization (SANTF). In SANTF, data from 800-plus medical cases are organized as a 3D table where the dimensions correspond to the set of patients, the set of frequent subgraphs, and the collection of words appearing in and near each data element mentioned in the reports. This scheme clusters each of these dimensions simultaneously, using the relationships in each dimension to constrain those in the others. Researchers can then link test results to lymphoma subtypes.

Submission + - Music Industry Argues Works Entering Public Domain Are Not in Public Interest (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With news that Canada intends to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings and performers, the recording industry is now pushing the change by arguing that works entering the public domain is not in the public interest. It is hard to see how anyone can credibly claim that works are "lost" to the public domain and that the public interest in not served by increased public access, but if anyone would make the claim, it would be the recording industry.

Submission + - iTunes Stops Working For Windows XP Users

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: iTunes users who still run Windows XP started to experience connectivity issues this week. As documented in an Apple Support Communities thread, they can’t log into the iTunes store, meaning functions like buying content, watching already purchased movies and TV shows, playing DRM-protected content, backing up, updating, and syncing all do not work.

Submission + - New documentary: When Women Code (theatlantic.com) 2

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap is a documentary that premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film dives into why an industry that's supposed to think different, to move fast and break things has the demographic breakdown it does. The Atlantic has a Q&A with the director of the documentary CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, which looks at the reasons behind the male-dominated world of software engineering.

Submission + - Virtual Reality Games can Improve Memory Retention of Safety Instructions (youtube.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: Using a virtual reality (VR) headset to experience risky situations as immersive 3D games improves memory retention of passenger safety instructions, according to research published in the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, and illustrated by a YouTube video. Researchers recruited occasional flyers: half of them played a VR gaming experience of an airliner water landing and evacuation, while the other half studied a real airline safety card. After one week, passengers who had studied the safety card suffered a significant loss of knowledge, while passengers who had played the VR game fully retained the safety knowledge gained. The research group has now made available its emergency water landing experience also for the Oculus Rift.

Submission + - Astronomers detect starlight reflected off an extrasolar planet (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: For the first time, astronomers have detected visible starlight reflecting off a planet orbiting a distant star. The telescope used in the discovery was too small to tell scientists much new about the previously discovered planet. But astronomers say the new technique used promises to reveal much more when combined with better spectrographs and bigger telescopes now in the works. “The ultimate goal is to characterize a planet like Earth,” says team leader Jorge Martins of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Porto, Portugal.

Comment Re:Of course AI will try to kill us all (Score 1) 197

by braindrainbahrain (#49523301) Attached to: Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer
Inspired by his never ending quest for progress, in 2084 man perfects the robotrons: A robot species so advanced that man is inferior to his own creation. Guided by their infallible logic, the robotrons conclude: The human race is inefficient and therefore must be destroyed. You are the last hope of mankind, due to a genetic engineering error, you possess superhuman powers. Your Mission is to stop the robotrons, and SAVE THE LAST HUMAN FAMILY.

Submission + - Automakers to gearheads: Stop repairing cars (autoblog.com)

Submitted by Mr_Blank
Mr_Blank writes: Automakers are supporting provisions in copyright law that could prohibit home mechanics and car enthusiasts from repairing and modifying their own vehicles. In comments filed with a federal agency that will determine whether tinkering with a car constitutes a copyright violation, OEMs and their main lobbying organization say cars have become too complex and dangerous for consumers and third parties to handle. The dispute arises from a section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that no one thought could apply to vehicles when it was signed into law in 1998. But now, in an era where cars are rolling computing platforms, the U.S. Copyright Office is examining whether provisions of the law that protect intellectual property should prohibit people from modifying and tuning their cars.

Submission + - The Machines Are Coming

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Zeynep Tufekci writes in an op-ed at the NYT that machines can now process regular spoken language and not only recognize human faces, but also read their expressions. Machines can classify personality types, and have started being able to carry out conversations with appropriate emotional tenor. Machines are getting better than humans at figuring out who to hire, who’s in a mood to pay a little more for that sweater, and who needs a coupon to nudge them toward a sale. It turns out that most of what we think of as expertise, knowledge and intuition is being deconstructed and recreated as an algorithmic competency, fueled by big data. "Machines aren’t used because they perform some tasks that much better than humans, but because, in many cases, they do a “good enough” job while also being cheaper, more predictable and easier to control than quirky, pesky humans," writes Tufekci. "Technology in the workplace is as much about power and control as it is about productivity and efficiency."

According to Tufekci technology is being used in many workplaces: to reduce the power of humans, and employers’ dependency on them, whether by replacing, displacing or surveilling them. Optimists insist that we’ve been here before, during the Industrial Revolution, when machinery replaced manual labor, and all we need is a little more education and better skills but Tufekci says that one historical example is no guarantee of future events. "Confronting the threat posed by machines, and the way in which the great data harvest has made them ever more able to compete with human workers, must be about our priorities," concludes Tufekci. "This problem is not us versus the machines, but between us, as humans, and how we value one another."

Slashdot Top Deals

The Tao is like a glob pattern: used but never used up. It is like the extern void: filled with infinite possibilities.

Close