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Games

Are Porn and Games Basically the Same Thing?->

Submitted by silentbrad
silentbrad writes "IGN published an article, today, discussing an editorial from CNN: Pornography and videogames are pretty much the same thing, according to a sensational and terrifying editorial published on CNN today called ‘The Demise of Guys: How Videogames and Porn are Ruining a Generation’. Games and porn are not only equal, they are equally damaging to young men, destroying their ability to connect with women, and therefore threatening the future of our entire species. ... The article, by psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan argues that young men are “hooked on arousal, sacrificing their schoolwork and relationships in the pursuit of getting a tech-based buzz”. ... Zimbardo, has danced this jig before. At the Long Beach TED conference last year he told a delighted audience that “guys are wiping out socially with girls and sexually with women.” He added that young men have been so zombiefied by games and porn that they are unable to function in basic human interactions. “It’s a social awkwardness like a stranger in a foreign land”, he said. “They don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to do.”"
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The Internet

Reddit Founder Leads Charge for a "Bat Signal for the Internet"->

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes "Beyond the Blackout

The Internet Defense League takes the tactic that killed SOPA & PIPA and turns it into a permanent force for defending the internet, and making it better. Think of it like the internet's Emergency Broadcast System, or its bat signal!

The Plan

When the internet's in danger and we need millions of people to act, the League will ask its members to broadcast an action. (Say, a prominent message asking everyone to call their elected leaders.) With the combined reach of our websites and social networks, we can be massively more effective than any one organization."
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Science

Rare Butterfly Flourishing Thanks To Warming Planet

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Although global warming can have disastrous consequences, at least one species is benefiting from the increased temperatures. The brown argus butterfly, a small, rare butterfly that lives in England, has expanded its range, thanks to the warming planet.

"The butterfly is now present throughout much of the south and east of England as far north as South and East Yorkshire," Rachel Pateman, study author and researcher at the University of York, told BBC Nature News. "This is unusual for species which are considered fairly scarce and specialized and so we were interested to discover what might have caused this rapid range expansion.""
Intel

Intel Publishes Open-Source Haswell, Valleyview Driver->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "One day after AMD released Southern Islands and Trinity GPU driver code for Linux users, Intel has trumped their move by releasing open-source driver code to Haswell and Valleyview. Haswell is the successor of the soon-to-launch Ivy Bridge, but there aren't too many driver-level changes there. Valleyview is a new Cedarview-based Atom System-on-Chip that has Intel Ivy Bridge graphics rather than the notorious PowerVR graphics core."
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Science

The Science of Judo->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "Martial arts are exhausting, as anyone who's traded a few punches, kicks, or throws can attest. But where exactly does the energy come from? Every form of exercise uses a different combination of the body's metabolic systems for energy. Cyclical sports such as running and cycling are relatively easy to replicate with exercise machines in a laboratory, but that's harder to do with more unpredictable sports such as martial arts. So a team of Brazilian researchers have taken the lab into the dojo to study the energy requirements of the Japanese art of judo."
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Hardware

New project could speed access to photonic chips->

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes "A project called Optoelectronic Systems Integration in Silicon (OpSIS) promises to bring silicon photonics within the reach of small companies and university researchers (http://www.nature.com/news/photonic-chips-made-easier-1.10264).
The idea behind silicon photonics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_photonics) is to move data around using photons rather than electrons, which means carving transistors and lasers out of the same wafer of silicon. But that requires an advanced manufacturing ‘foundry’ — something that only a few companies and research institutions can afford.
OpSIS, based at the University of Washington in Seattle and at the University of Delaware in Newark, will provide design support for researchers in silicon photonics; organizes shared production runs; and arranges low-cost access to advanced foundries so that academics and start-up companies can create prototype devices.
The shared-production model is based on the University of Southern California’s Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service (MOSIS), which has been operating since 1981 in Marina del Rey and has helped the semiconductor industry to grow rapidly. Researchers hope the new project will give silicon photonics a similar boost."
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Power

Is the electric car dying?-> 7

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "Electric cars and plug-in hybrids took a beating on reliability, testing, and sales over the winter: $40,000 Tesla batteries bricking, a Fisker dying at the hands of Consumer Reports testers, a bit player going under, production suspended for five weeks on the Chevrolet Volt. Taken together, critics say, it proves electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) have finally been exposed as overpriced frauds. In reality, though, it's more likely that these events are just randomness, and bugs caused by new, relatively untested tech. The Chevrolet Volt, for example, has probably just run out of early adopters (it's too expensive for mass market) — and the Fisker Karma, which famously had a full system failure the first time Consumer Reports reached 65 mph, is a classic case of immature tech (and an immature startup) that hasn't been fully tested. The fact is, electric cars aren't dying — they're just hitting a few speed bumps, like all new tech."
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HDMI Cables: A Closer Look Under the Jacket->

Submitted by
Stowie101
Stowie101 writes "There are some basic guidelines that must be followed. But at the end of the day, each HDMI manufacturer has the power to build its own concoction of “Magic Sauce.”

A total of 19 wires and shields are needed for this system to work. That’s a lot of wires to cram into a single jacket, not to mention certain attributes for how they are in placed within the jacket.

So where do you start? How does one determine placement, gauge, insulators, shields, size, etc? This is where that “Magic Sauce” can enter the design phase.

Each design has to be defined before it starts. Decisions such as bandwidth, with/without Ethernet, length, and cable size must be carried out first. A precise selection process now takes place not only on the wires specification themselves, but the challenge of just how to proportionate them all to fit into a limited jacket, kind of like the “rob Peter to pay Paul” scenario. Favoring video and not DDC could put the system in an HDCP deficit. Reverse that order and the video can go south. Or is a fair and balanced approach the answer for HDMI integrity?

"Video, DDC (HDCP&EDID), 5 volts, Hotplug, CEC and a spare wire take up most of the real estate inside the jacket. For discussion purposes, we will use a relatively short cable length of 5 meters to analyze. With this form factor a small 28-AWG wire gauge is all that is necessary for the 5-volt function to perform reliably."
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Flying Dutchman flaps wings like a bird, takes off->

Submitted by AlejoHausner
AlejoHausner writes "Dutch engineer Jarno Smeets built flapping power-assisted wearable wings, using videogame controllers and an Android phone. In his video, he manages a controlled flight of 100 meters. Some commenters think it's a fake, but http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/human-bird-wings/ says it looks real."
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Mozilla

Mozilla Makes HTTPS Google Search Default for Firefox->

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes "Mozilla has made a small but important change to the way that its Firefox browser handles search queries directed to Google, making the search provider's encrypted search service the default option. The modification is in is not in the stable version of Firefox yet, but users who download the daily beta builds can access it now.

The switch to using HTTPS for search by default is a major steo forward for Mozilla in terms of protecting the privacy of users' search queries and results. Google has had an option for encrypted search for some time now and the company made secure search the default choice for users who are logged in to their Google accounts last October. However, Google has not made that option the default for its own Chrome browser."
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NASA

Mystery Rising Within Mercury->

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes "Something besides volcanic eruptions and asteroid and comet impacts has sculpted the surface of Mercury — an unknown process, possibly still going on today, that causes the ground to swell from the inside out. The evidence, collected by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft currently orbiting the innermost planet, is scattered all over Mercury, including a dramatic finding that half of the floor of the biggest crater on the planet has been raised above the walls.

The MESSENGER's team findings were announced at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston on Wednesday and will be published in this week's Science."
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Trademark asserted against Hollywood sign painted on hockey helmet-> 2

Submitted by Froze
Froze writes "Breaking sports news for slashdotters: Jonathan Bernier, a goalie for the LA Kings hockey team, is being forced to remove Hollywood sign he had painted on his mask to celebrate LA's film industry. The Hollywood chamber of Comerce claims trademark and threatens NHL with legal action.

Clearly, if Bernier is forced to remove the Hollywood sign from his mask, there's only one sensible reaction: Creating a new mask that's a tribute to the illegal downloading of movies on the Internet.
How does one visualize a torrent?"
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Comment: Re:Payment never is or was about costs. (Score 1) 517

by Froze (#38708648) Attached to: White House Responds To SOPA, PIPA, and OPEN

This is a classic argument made in favor of capitalism. However, it also ignores the skeleton in the closet, and that is that external cost are not accounted for and those costs include things like policing your property, prosecuting violators, maintaining records of ownership, etc. If you as a creator are willing to bear all those costs then you are entitled to indefinite profit from your work, but if you offload the cost burden onto the populace then at some point the value added to the economy by your creation is outweighed by the cost of protecting it and it rightfully should fall into public domain.

Piracy

Copyright lawyer accused of pirating anti-piracy m->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "It's always amusing when people who crusade against a purported evil are caught engaged in the very thing they're so adamantly against. Politicians are the usual torch-bearers for such shenanigans, but that doesn't mean others can't get in on the action. Just ask John Steele, an anti-piracy lawyer who was caught (again!) using another group's writings without permission."
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The Internet

Are Anonymous and LulzSec about to hack PayPal?->

Submitted by
deneefau
deneefau writes "In a joint statement published earlier this week, hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec urged readers to boycott e-commerce giant PayPal, claiming:

“PayPal continues to withhold funds from WikiLeaks, a beacon of truth in these dark times” and “PayPal’s willingness to fold to legislation should be proof enough that they don’t deserve the customers they get.”

Could this call for action be the start of a sustained campaign against PayPal? Could a large hack-attack be planned for PayPal in the near future?"
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People tend to make rules for others and exceptions for themselves.