Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Godzillomycota Chernobilli Kosmonautikus (Score 1) 47

Damn. You're right. That article doesn't say it, and I didn't find the one I originally read, which was about bacteria living deep in the earth where the radiation generated ionization states that they used. IIRC it was about bacteria living in a granite based low-level uranium source. And they were living a lot deeper than previously detected bacteria. (This was about 3-4 decades ago, so it's not surprising that I can't find that article. I think it was in Science News, but possibly it was in New Scientist. In any case, what I read was a magazine article. And it was rather explicit...though of course not detailed.)

Submission + - Be nice - Batman is watching! (sciencealert.com)

Black Parrot writes: From ScienceAlert:

A new study has found that people are more likely to act kind towards others when Batman is present â" and not for the reasons you might assume.
[...]
Psychologists from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Italy conducted experiments on the Milan metro to see who, if anyone, might offer their seat to a pregnant passenger.
The kicker? Sometimes Batman was there â" or at least, another experimenter dressed as him. The researchers were checking if people were more likely to give up their seat in the presence of the caped crusader.
And sure enough, there did seem to be a correlation. In 138 different experiments, somebody offered their seat to an experimenter wearing a hidden prosthetic belly 67.21 percent of the time in the presence of Batman.
That's a lot more often than times the superhero wasn't around â" in those cases, a passenger offered a seat just 37.66 percent of the time.
[...]
"Interestingly, among those who left their spot in the experimental condition, nobody directly associated their gesture with the presence of Batman, and 14 (43.75 percent) reported that they did not see Batman at all."

The article goes on to speculate about what is causing people to be more generous.

Comment Re: \o/ (Score 1) 66

But if they talk, should you believe them. People say all sorts of things. You can't really trust strangers whose motives you can only guess at. Perhaps they're about to be fired, so they want to damage the company.

For that matter, if someone said a game was NOT made with AI, I wouldn't believe them. They only know part of what was being done, so even if they're intending to be honest they can't be believed.

I think he was probably correct when he asserted "AI will be a part of the way all games are made".

Comment Re: CEO sees roadblock to more profit and says let (Score 2) 66

It's not slop everywhere else, just in many places. AIs that have been custom trained for a particular situation can often do quite well. This work particularly well in classification, but also works in several other areas.

The main criteria at the moment is "so you have an easy way to check correctness?". If you do, then AI can, when properly trained and configured, do a good job.

Submission + - 'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It's 2022 (404media.co)

alternative_right writes: AI slop feels inescapable — whether you’re watching TV, reading the news, or trying to find a new apartment.

That is, unless you’re using Slop Evader, a new browser tool that filters your web searches to only include results from before November 30, 2022 — the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.

The tool is available for Firefox and Chrome, and has one simple function: Showing you the web as it was before the deluge of AI-generated garbage. It uses Google search functions to index popular websites and filter results based on publication date, a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free.

Submission + - Ion-based cooling technique could make computer chips more powerful (phys.org)

alternative_right writes: [R]esearchers at The University of Osaka have developed a strategy to enhance cooling by driving the flow of ions through nanoscale channels. This ionothermoelectric strategy is analogous to the Peltier technique, in which passing an electric current through a material results in heating or cooling. This compelling invention is published in ACS Nano.

"We fabricated a nanosized pore in a semiconductor membrane and surrounded the nanopore with a 'gate,' in the form of a nanowire. Applying a voltage to the gate induced the flow of ions through the nanopore," explains lead author, Makusu Tsutsui. "Varying the voltage modulated the surface charge of the nanopore."

A negative applied voltage resulted in a negatively charged nanopore that was only permeable to positively charged ions, or cations. Consequently, each ion drags a certain quantity of heat along with its charge. The team created a concentration gradient in saltwater around the nanopore to drive cation transport in one direction, effectively pumping heat out of the nanopore. Reversing the applied voltage made the nanopore surface positive and permeable only to negative ions, or anions, therefore switching the system from cooling to heating.

Comment Re:AI Integration is not a benefit (Score 1) 55

No. It can't be properly expressive without understanding the story that it's reading. Punctuation is just not enough, it doesn't capture many different shades of meaning. E.g., an ironic statement should be read in a different tone than a factual statement, even with exactly the same punctuation. (That's one example out of MANY. Consider, e.g., the scene in "Alice in Wonderland" where she's talking about jumping off the top of the house.)

Comment Re:AI Integration is not a benefit (Score 2) 55

Well, I *do* want an "AI PC", but not anything currently on the market. I want one that will understand books in HTML format and read them to me in a reasonably expressive tone. I'd also like it to be able to pause and then answer questions about what was going on earlier if I missed a point.
OTOH, I'd also want it to be strictly segregated from most of what I do.

Submission + - X Update Shows Foreign Origin for Many Political Accounts (apnews.com)

skam240 writes: Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature Saturday that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts posting in support of the MAGA movement to thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, are based outside the United States — raising concerns about foreign influence on U.S. politics.

Researchers at NewsGuard, a firm that tracks online misinformation, identified several popular accounts — purportedly run by Americans interested in politics – that instead were based in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa.

The accounts were leading disseminators of some misleading and polarizing claims about U.S. politics, including ones that said Democrats bribed the moderators of a 2024 presidential debate.

Comment Re:An eloquent way... (Score 2) 70

I don't think you understand the process of science. That is the appropriate reaction to any initial claim. An initial observation needs to be repeated by others, and the data that justified the initial claim should be reanalyzed by others to see if they agree with the interpretation. Then arguments ensue. Eventually people "pretty much" come to an agreement.

Sometimes the arguments last for decades.

Slashdot Top Deals

The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column card. -- Dennis M. Ritchie

Working...