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Television

+ - Desperately seeking Siri->

Submitted by redkemper
redkemper writes "Let’s face it — TV is boring. Not the 57 Channels and Nothin’ On kind of boring, the kind of boring you experience when you’ve been using the same old technology for far too long. It’s always the same story: a flat panel on a wall or table, a viewer on a couch and a remote control that connects them. Sure, remotes have changed over the years but regardless of how many buttons or touchscreens you slap on them, the way users interact with their televisions is the same. And that’s why Apple’s upcoming reentry into the living room is so compelling. Siri could literally change everything..."
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+ - Teaching the iPhone to Drive->

Submitted by
mwolfam
mwolfam writes "The visual singularity, the point when computers can analyze imagery as well as humans, is rapidly approaching. Niche computer vision algorithms like face detection are already ubiquitous, but breakthroughs by Google and others in large category image sets show that we are starting to get to the point where exponential growth will enable technology currently relegated to science fiction as computers begin to ape human vision. "So, Siri, drive me to work while I finish watching the last twenty minutes of Terminator.""
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Android

+ - SPAM: Samsung – The Uncrowned Leader in the Market of Smart Phones

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The market of smart phones has many brands fighting for the summit and it is a never ending race as the technology has something daily new to give to the world. So how does one keep a tab over it in an industry like that of the smart phone which needs to accommodate the latest technology in the devices."
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NASA

+ - Curiosity celebrates the first anniversary of its mission to find life on Mars->

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "Yesterday morning marked the one-year anniversary of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. One year ago, an Atlas V 541 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral with the largest, most expensive interplanetary payload ever constructed by humankind: Mars rover Curiosity. Tasked with the mission of finding out whether Mars has ever supported extraterrestrial life, the MSL mission has so far been an unparalleled success — and hopefully, in the skilled hands of NASA engineers, Curiosity will continue to return valuable scientific data for years to come. In recent news, Curiosity took its first sniff of Martian atmosphere using its SAM instrument and found no sign of methane, probably ruling out the existence of alien life on Mars. In the last few days, Curiosity has finally moved away from the Rocknest site and is now situated at Point Lake, where NASA hopes to try out Curiosity’s last remaining untested tool: a drill that can bore into rocks. Then, if all goes to plan, Curiosity will spend a few weeks/months at Glenelg, and then roll on towards Mount Sharp — the primary target of NASA's MSL mission."
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Businesses

+ - Revealed: Google's manual for its unseen humans who rate the web->

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes "Technology? Yes, but also toiling home-workers

Exclusive It's widely believed that Google search results are produced entirely by computer algorithms — in large part because Google would like this to be widely believed. But in fact a little-known group of home-worker humans plays a large part in the Google process. The way these raters go about their work has always been a mystery. Now, The Register has seen a copy of the guidelines Google issues to them."
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IBM

+ - Believe it or not, the smartphone is 20 years old->

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes "The IBM Simon was rolled out on Nov. 23, 1992, at Comdex, though it was code-named “Angler” at the time. You likely couldn’t have fit it in your pocket, given that it was about the size of today’s Nexus 7, but then, at 18 ounces in weight, it probably would’ve made you walk funny anyway. It sported a 16MHz processor, 1MB of memory and 1MB of storage. Its operating system was a variant of DOS.

Its external app ecosystem consisted of exactly one program—a PC-to-Simon texting tool called DispatchIt, which cost $3000 for the PC software and an additional $300 for every Simon client. To be fair, however, it could do some things modern smartphones can’t, like accept fax transmissions."
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Technology

+ - Hacking the Presidents DNA->

Submitted by mwolfam
mwolfam writes "No longer relegated to science fiction, cheap DNA sequencing and personalized medicine holds great promis for disease treatment, but also introduces the possibility of personalized bio-weapons that could be targeted agains celebrities, CEOs and political leaders."
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+ - A Guide for Using SOPA & PIPA to Kill Scientif->

Submitted by mwolfam
mwolfam writes "Simply put, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) currently under development in Congress will provide a rapid way to sentence websites to death without the need for pesky things like trials and juries. Much to the surprise of nobody who understands how the Internet works, these two Acts will have absolutely no effect on digital piracy, but they will create an environment where freedom of speech could be severely curtailed, large companies can execute competitors, and scientific data can be hidden from the public."
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Comment: Only One Way to Fight It (Score 1) 513

by mwolfam (#38621844) Attached to: Lawmakers Intent On Approving SOPA, PIPA
Make those people in Congress fear for their jobs. I will be out today distributing fliers urging people to contact their representatives (both my Senators support it and my Representative is a co-sponsor). At the same time I am collecting signatures to put anit-SOPA candidates into the primary. Bitching on the internet is a good place to start. Let your Social Networks know this is happening, but if you really care then you have to actually get out there. Most people don't even know this is happening. I hope Google and Wikipedia will blackout for a short time just to prove the danger, but even then you have to be willing to make a stand occasionally.

+ - Negative Irreproducible Tweets for Science Publish-> 2

Submitted by mwolfam
mwolfam writes "Every scientist has at least one paper or graph tucked in a folder that lies in a dusty corner of the hard drive next to that dancing baby that used to be all the rage. The data is interesting, but doesn't lend itself to the creation of the grand narrative you must have for a traditional publication. It's time to expand traditional scientific publication to include a place for the data that normally falls through the cracks: short but interesting bits of data, negative results, and irreproducible results"
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Comment: Giving it away (Score 1) 156

by mwolfam (#35536480) Attached to: The 'Adventure' In Self-Publishing an IT Book
For an unknown author like me, I can attest that a combination of free and sales is a great strategy. Making 9k isn't bad for a book. I've been doing something similar with my novel, Betrayal. I am releasing the whole book, a chapter at a time, with a link to Smashwords.com, where I have it for sale ($.99). Before I started giving the book away, I had less than 10 sales. On Smashwords, the first 20% was available for free, but I still didn't see the sales. However, once I started posting more free chapters, I've had 50 sales a week! Not sure how sales will hold up once I finish releasing the whole thing, but I am hoping for a result similar to this guys experience. With a .99 sale price, I have been getting enough reviews and sales to make it onto the sales charts at Smashwords. The main point is that without giving it away for free, no one would have ever heard of me. I would have made fewer sales by only giving away a small portion, than I am by giving away the whole book. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/37846

COBOL is for morons. -- E.W. Dijkstra

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