An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In recent months, the AI industry has started moving toward so-called simulated reasoning models that use a "chain of thought" process to work through tricky problems in multiple logical steps. At the same time, recent research has cast doubt on whether those models have even a basic understanding of general logical concepts or an accurate grasp of their own "thought process." Similar research shows that these "reasoning" models can often produce incoherent, logically unsound answers when questions include irrelevant clauses or deviate even slightly from common templates found in their training data.

In a recent pre-print paper, researchers from the University of Arizona summarize this existing work as "suggest[ing] that LLMs are not principled reasoners but rather sophisticated simulators of reasoning-like text." To pull on that thread, the researchers created a carefully controlled LLM environment in an attempt to measure just how well chain-of-thought reasoning works when presented with "out of domain" logical problems that don't match the specific logical patterns found in their training data. The results suggest that the seemingly large performance leaps made by chain-of-thought models are "largely a brittle mirage" that "become[s] fragile and prone to failure even under moderate distribution shifts," the researchers write. "Rather than demonstrating a true understanding of text, CoT reasoning under task transformations appears to reflect a replication of patterns learned during training." [...]

Rather than showing the capability for generalized logical inference, these chain-of-thought models are "a sophisticated form of structured pattern matching" that "degrades significantly" when pushed even slightly outside of its training distribution, the researchers write. Further, the ability of these models to generate "fluent nonsense" creates "a false aura of dependability" that does not stand up to a careful audit. As such, the researchers warn heavily against "equating [chain-of-thought]-style output with human thinking" especially in "high-stakes domains like medicine, finance, or legal analysis." Current tests and benchmarks should prioritize tasks that fall outside of any training set to probe for these kinds of errors, while future models will need to move beyond "surface-level pattern recognition to exhibit deeper inferential competence," they write.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: Advanced robots don't necessarily need to look like C3PO from "Star Wars" or George Jetson's maid Rosie, despite all the hype over humanoids from Wall Street and Big Tech. In fact, some of the biggest skeptics about human-shaped robots come from within the robotics industry itself. [...] The most productive -- and profitable -- bots are the ones that can do single tasks cheaply and efficiently. "If you look at where robots are really bringing value in a manufacturing environment, it is combining industrial or collaborative robots with mobility," ABB managing director Ali Raja tells Axios. "I don't see that there are any real practical applications where humanoids are bringing in a lot of value."

"The reason we have two legs is because whether Darwin or God or whoever made us, we have to figure out how to traverse an infinite number of things," like climbing a mountain or riding a bike, explains Michael Cicco, CEO of Fanuc America Corp. "When you get into the factory, even if it's a million things, it's still a finite number of things that you need to do." Human-shaped robots are over-engineered solutions to most factory chores that could be better solved by putting a robot arm on a wheeled base, he said.

"The thing about humanoids is not that it's a human factor. It's that it's more dynamically stable," counters Melonee Wise, chief product officer at Agility Robotics, which is developing a humanoid robot called Digit. When humans grab something heavy, they can shift their weight for better balance. The same is true for a humanoid, she said. Using a robotic arm on a mobile base to pick up something heavy, "it's like I'm a little teapot and you become very unstable," she said, bending at the waist.

The internet's physical mass remains contested among scientists, with estimates ranging from a strawberry to something almost unimaginably small. In 2006, Harvard physicist Russell Seitz calculated the internet weighed roughly 50 grams based on server energy, a figure that would now equate to potato-weight given internet growth.

Christopher White, president of NEC Laboratories America, has dismissed this calculation as "just wrong." White suggests a more accurate method that accounts for the energy needed to encode all internet data in one place, yielding approximately 53 quadrillionths of a gram at room temperature. Alternatively, if the internet's projected 175 zettabytes of data were stored in DNA -- a storage medium scientists are actively exploring -- it would weigh 960,947 grams, equivalent to 10.6 American males. Though scientists debate measurement methods, White asserts the web's true complexity makes it "essentially unknowable."

Oakland, California is now home to "the first commercial hydrogen fuel station for big-rig trucks in the United States," according to the Los Angeles Times — serving 30 hydrogen fuel-cell trucks.

The newspaper says the facility "could mark the start of a nationwide network for fuel-cell truck refueling. It could also flop." Hydrogen fuel is expensive — as much as four times more expensive than gasoline or diesel fuel. The fuel cells, which drive electric motors to drive the truck, are enormously expensive as well.... The vehicles themselves are expensive too. Both battery electric and hydrogen fuel-cell trucks can cost three times as much or more than a $120,000 diesel truck. Those buying the trucks can qualify for state and federal subsidies to make up most of the upfront costs.
But government regulations may spark some demand: New diesel truck sales will be outlawed in California by 2036. Only zero-tailpipe-emission new trucks will be allowed. Already, zero-emission requirements are in place for trucks that enter ocean ports. And only two technologies are available to achieve that goal: battery electric trucks and hydrogen fuel-cell trucks. "We believe a good portion of those will be hydrogen vehicles," said Matt Miyasato, chief of public policy for hydrogen fuel distributor FirstElement Fuel. FirstElement, through its True Zero brand fueling stations, is the largest hydrogen vehicle fuel distributor in the U.S...

Battery electric is gaining a strong foothold in the medium-sized delivery truck market, but hydrogen could have a leg up for long-haul trucking. While a fuel cell is comparable in size to a diesel engine, a battery big enough for long-haul trucks adds weight and size and cuts down on the total freight load the truck can deliver. And while an electric truck battery can take hours to recharge, the refill time for hydrogen is more comparable to filling up with diesel fuel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: When Nintendo sued the developers of Yuzu out of existence on March 4th, it wasn't just an attack on the leading way to play Nintendo Switch games without a Switch. It was a warning to anyone building a video game emulator. Seven developers have now stepped away from projects, are shutting them down, or have left the emulation scene entirely. Of those that remain, many are circling the wagons, getting quieter and more careful, trying not to paint targets on their backs. Four developers declined to talk to The Verge, telling me they didn't want to draw attention. One even tried to delete answers to my questions after we'd begun, suddenly scared of attracting press.

Not everyone is so afraid. Four other emulator teams tell me they're optimistic Nintendo won't challenge them, that they're on strong legal footing, and that Yuzu may have been an unusually incriminating case. One decade-long veteran tells me everyone's just a bit more worried. But when I point out that Nintendo didn't have to prove a thing in court, they all admit they don't have money for lawyers. They say they'd probably be forced to roll over, like Yuzu, if the Japanese gaming giant came knocking. "I would do what I'd have to do," the most confident of the four tells me. "I would want to fight it... but at the same time, I know we exist because we don't antagonize Nintendo."

There's a new meme where Yuzu is the mythical Hydra: cut off one head, and two more take its place. It's partly true in how multiple forks of Yuzu (and 3DS emulator Citra) sprung up shortly after their predecessors died: Suyu, Sudachi, Lemonade, and Lime are a few of the public names. But they're not giving Nintendo the middle finger: they're treating Nintendo's lawsuit like a guidebook about how not to piss off the company. In its legal complaint, Nintendo claimed Yuzu was "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale," giving users "detailed instructions" on how to "get it running with unlawful copies of Nintendo Switch games," among other things. Okay, no more guides, say the Switch emulator developers who spoke to me. They also say they're stripping out some parts of Yuzu that made it easier to play pirated games. As Ars Technica reported, a forked version called Suyu will require you to bring the firmware, title.keys, and prod.keys from your Switch before you can decrypt and play Nintendo games. Only one of those was technically required before. (Never mind that most people don't have an easily hackable first-gen Switch and would likely download these things off the net.) The developer of another fork tells me he plans to do something similar, making users "fend for yourself" by making sure the code doesn't auto-generate any keys.

Most developers I spoke to are also trying to make it clear they aren't profiting at Nintendo's expense. One who initially locked early access builds behind a donation page has stopped doing that, making them publicly available on GitHub instead. The leader of another project tells me nothing will ever be paywalled, and for now, there's "strictly no donation," either. When I ask about the Dolphin Emulator, which faced a minor challenge from Nintendo last year, I'm told it publicly exposes its tiny nonprofit budget for anyone to scrutinize. But I don't know that these steps are enough to prevent Nintendo from throwing around its weight again, particularly when it comes to emulating the Nintendo Switch, its primary moneymaker. Since Yuzu's shut down, a slew of other emulators left the scene. The include (as highlighted by The Verge):

- The Citra emulator for Nintendo 3DS is gone
- The Pizza Boy emulators for Nintendo Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color are gone
- The Drastic emulator for Nintendo DS is free for now and will be removed
- The lead developer of Yuzu and Citra has stepped away from emulation
- The lead developer of Strato, a Switch emulator, has stepped away from emulation
- Dynarmic, used to speed up various emulators including Yuzu, has abruptly ended development
- One contributor on Ryujinx, a Switch emulator, has stepped away from the project
- AetherSX2, a PS2 emulator, is finally gone (mostly unrelated; development was suspended a year ago)

"This year has been a major turning point in American health care," reports USA Today, "and patients can anticipate several major developments in the new year," including the beginning of a CRISPR "revolution" and "a new reckoning with drug prices that could change the landscape of the U.S. health care system for decades to come." Health care officials expect 2024 to bring a wave of innovation and change in medicine, treatment and public health... Many think 2024 could be the year more people have the tools to follow through on New Year's resolutions about weight loss. If they can afford them and manage to stick with them, people can turn to a new generation of remarkably effective weight-loss drugs, also called GLP-1s, which offer the potential for substantial weight loss...

In 2023, mental health issues became among the nation's most deadly, costly and pervasive health crises... The dearth of remedies has also paved the way for an unsuspecting class of drugs: psychedelics. MDMA, a party drug commonly known as "ecstasy," could win approval for legal distribution in 2024, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Another psychedelic, a ketamine derivative eskatemine, sold as Spravato, was approved in 2019 to treat depression, but it is being treated like a conventional therapy that must be dosed regularly, not like a psychedelic that provides a long-lasting learning experience, said Matthew Johnson, an expert in psychedelics at Johns Hopkins University. MDMA (midomafetamine capsules) would be different, as the first true psychedelic to win FDA approval.

In a late-stage trial of patients with moderate or severe post-traumatic stress disorder, close to 90% showed clinically significant improvements four months after three treatments with MDMA and more than 70% no longer met the criteria for having the disorder, which represented "really impressive results," according to Matthew Johnson, an expert in psychedelics at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. Psilocybin, known colloquially as "magic mushrooms," is also working its way through the federal approval process, but it likely won't come up before officials for another year, Johnson said. Psychedelics are something to keep an eye on in the future, as they're being used to treat an array of mental health issues: eskatimine for depression, MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for addiction. Johnson said his research suggests that psychedelics will probably have a generalizable benefit across many mental health challenges in the years to come.
2024 will also be the first year America's drug-makers face new limits on how much they can increase prices for drugs covered by the federal health insurance program Medicare.

According to Mozilla's *Privacy Not Included project, every major car brand fails to adhere to the most basic privacy and security standards in new internet-connected models, and all 25 of the brands Mozilla examined flunked the organization's test. Gizmodo reports: Mozilla found brands including BMW, Ford, Toyota, Tesla, and Subaru collect data about drivers including race, facial expressions, weight, health information, and where you drive. Some of the cars tested collected data you wouldn't expect your car to know about, including details about sexual activity, race, and immigration status, according to Mozilla. [...] The worst offender was Nissan, Mozilla said. The carmaker's privacy policy suggests the manufacturer collects information including sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic data, though there's no details about how exactly that data is gathered. Nissan reserves the right to share and sell "preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes" to data brokers, law enforcement, and other third parties.

Other brands didn't fare much better. Volkswagen, for example, collects your driving behaviors such as your seatbelt and braking habits and pairs that with details such as age and gender for targeted advertising. Kia's privacy policy reserves the right to monitor your "sex life," and Mercedes-Benz ships cars with TikTok pre-installed on the infotainment system, an app that has its own thicket of privacy problems. The privacy and security problems extend beyond the nature of the data car companies siphon off about you. Mozilla said it was unable to determine whether the brands encrypt any of the data they collect, and only Mercedes-Benz responded to the organization's questions.

Mozilla also found that many car brands engage in "privacy washing," or presenting consumers with information that suggests they don't have to worry about privacy issues when the exact opposite is true. Many leading manufacturers are signatories to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation's "Consumer Privacy Protection Principles (PDF)." According to Mozilla, these are a non-binding set of vague promises organized by the car manufacturers themselves. Questions around consent are essentially a joke as well. Subaru, for example, says that by being a passenger in the car, you are considered a "user" who has given the company consent to harvest information about you. Mozilla said a number of car brands say it's the drivers responsibility to let passengers know about their car's privacy policies -- as if the privacy policies are comprehensible to drivers in the first place. Toyota, for example, has a constellation of 12 different privacy policies for your reading pleasure.

"For years scientists have believed that when it comes to weight gain, all calories are created equal," the Washington Post reported last month.

"But an intriguing new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that's not true. The body appears to react differently to calories ingested from high-fiber whole foods vs. ultra-processed junk foods." The reason? Cheap processed foods are more quickly absorbed in your upper gastrointestinal tract, which means more calories for your body and fewer for your gut microbiome, which is located near the end of your digestive tract. But when we eat high-fiber foods, they aren't absorbed as easily, so they make the full journey down your digestive tract to your large intestine, where the trillions of bacteria that make up your gut microbiome are waiting. By eating a fiber-rich diet, you are not just feeding yourself, but also your intestinal microbes, which, the new research shows, effectively reduces your calorie intake.

The study reveals that inside all of us, our gut microbes are in a tug of war with our bodies for calories, said Karen D. Corbin, an investigator at the AdventHealth Translational Research Institute of Metabolism and Diabetes in Orlando and the lead author of the study.
The closely-tracked study participants ate foods "like crispy puffed rice cereal, white bread, American cheese, ground beef, cheese puffs, vanilla wafers, cold cuts and other processed meats, and sugary snacks and fruit juices." Then they switched to the "microbiome enhancer diet," with foods like "oats, beans, lentils, chickpeas, brown rice, quinoa and other whole grains" (plus fruits, nuts and vegetables).

Despite getting "the same amount of calories and similar amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrates," the Post reports that "On average, they lost 217 calories a day on the fiber-rich diet, about 116 more calories than they lost on the processed-food diet."

Alexander De Croo (the prime minister of Belgium), Mark Rutte (the prime minister of the Netherlands), Xavier Bettel (the prime minister of Luxembourg), Emmanuel Macron (the president of France), Olaf Scholz (the chancellor of Germany), Leo Varadkar (the prime minister of Ireland), Jonas Gahr Store (the prime minister of Norway), Rishi Sunak (the prime minister of the United Kingdom), and Mette Frederiksen (the prime minister of Denmark), writing at Politico: We need offshore wind turbines -- and we need a lot of them. We need them to reach our climate goals, and to rid ourselves of Russian gas, ensuring a more secure and independent Europe. Held for the first time last year, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands came together for the inaugural North Sea Summit in the Danish harbor town of Esbjerg, setting historic goals for offshore wind with the Esbjerg Declaration. It paved the way for making the North Seas a green power plant for Europe, as well as a major contributor to climate neutrality and strengthening energy security.

This Monday, nine countries will meet for the next North Sea Summit -- this time in the Belgian town of Ostend -- where France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway and the United Kingdom will also put their political weight behind developing green energy in the North Seas, including the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish and Celtic Seas. Together, we will combine and coordinate our ambitions for deploying offshore wind and developing an offshore electricity grid, putting Europe on the path toward a green economy fueled by offshore green power plants. Collectively, our target for offshore wind in the North Seas is now 120 gigawatts by 2030, and a minimum of 300 gigawatts by 2050 -- larger than any of the co-signatories' existing generation capacity at a national level. And to deliver on this ambition, we are committing to building an entire electricity system in the North Seas based on renewable energy by developing cooperation projects.

This is a massive undertaking and a true example of the green transition in the making. It also requires huge investments in infrastructure, both offshore and on land. It presents us with a political and environmental dilemma as well: We are facing a climate crisis at the same time some of our ecosystems are in decline, and offshore wind is an integral part of both climate action and safeguarding our energy security. Thus, time is of the essence, and we must follow up on the progress already made on reining in the burden of bureaucracy for renewable projects.

This week CNN published an article chronicling how 35 countries "have come together to try and master nuclear fusion, a process that occurs naturally in the sun — and all stars — but is painfully difficult to replicate on Earth.

"Fusion promises a virtually limitless form of energy that, unlike fossil fuels, emits zero greenhouse gases and, unlike the nuclear fission power used today, produces no long-life radioactive waste. Mastering it could literally save humanity from climate change, a crisis of our own making." If it is mastered, fusion energy will undoubtedly power much of the world. Just 1 gram of fuel as input can create the equivalent of eight tons of oil in fusion power. That's an astonishing yield of 8 million to 1. Atomic experts rarely like to estimate when fusion energy may be widely available, often joking that, no matter when you ask, it's always 30 years away. But for the first time in history, that may actually be true....

The main challenge is sustaining it. The tokamak in the UK — called the Joint European Torus, or JET — held fusion energy for five seconds, but that's simply the longest that machine will go for. Its magnets were made of copper and were built in the 1970s. Any more than five seconds under such heat would cause them to melt. ITER uses newer magnets that can last much longer, and the project aims to produce a 10-fold return on energy, generating 500 megawatts from an input of 50 megawatts.... The dimensions are mind-blowing. The tokamak will ultimately weigh 23,000 tons. That's the combined weight of three Eiffel towers. It will comprise a million components, further differing into no fewer than 10 million smaller parts.

This powerful behemoth will be surrounded by some of the largest magnets ever created. Their staggering size — some of them have diameters of up to 24 meters — means they are are too large to transport and must be assembled on site in a giant hall.... Even the digital design of this enormous machine sits across 3D computer files that take up more than two terabytes of drive space. That's the same amount of space you could save more than 160 million one-page Word documents on. Behind hundreds of workers putting the ITER project together are around 4,500 companies with 15,000 employees from all over the globe... Now commercial businesses are preparing to generate and sell fusion energy, so optimistic they are that this energy of the future could come online by mid-century.

But as ever with nuclear fusion, as one challenge is overcome another seems to crop up. The limited stocks and price of tritium is one, so ITER is trying to produce its own. On that front, the outlook isn't bad. The blanket within the tokamak will be coated with lithium, and as escaped plasma neutrons reach it, they will react with the lithium to create more tritium fuel... First plasma is now expected in 2025, and the first deuterium-tritium experiments are hoped to take place in 2035, though even those are now under review — delayed, in part, by the pandemic and persistent supply chain issues.
"This article has some nice photography," writes Slashdot reader technology_dude. "It really makes it hit home on the incredible amount of design and planning work that is required."

The article notes that when Stephen Hawking was asked which scientific discovery he'd like to see in his lifetime, Hawking answered, "I would like nuclear fusion to become a practical power source."

A review of 26 studies finds benefits of music on mental health are similar to those of exercise and weight loss. From a report: "Music," wrote the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, "has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation." A new analysis has empirically confirmed something that rings true for many music lovers -- that singing, playing or listening to music can improve wellbeing and quality of life. A review of 26 studies conducted across several countries including Australia, the UK and the US has found that music may provide a clinically significant boost to mental health. Seven of the studies involved music therapy, 10 looked at the effect of listening to music, eight examined singing and one studied the effect of gospel music. The analysis, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, confirmed "music interventions are linked to meaningful improvements in wellbeing," as measured quantitatively via standardised quality-of-life survey data. The effects were similar whether participants sang, played or listened to music.

This true story of a hammer, a feather, the Apollo 15 mission, and the answers to humanity's oldest questions about how stuff falls. From a report: Does a falling object move at a constant speed, or does it speed up? If you drop a heavy object and a light one at the same time, which will fall faster? The great thing about these two questions is that you can ask pretty much anyone and they will have an answer -- even if they are actually wrong. The even greater thing is that it's fairly simple to determine the answers experimentally. [...] OK, but what about dropping a rock and feather -- doesn't the rock hit first? Usually, the answer is yes. But let's replace the rock with a hammer and then just take a change of scenery and move the experiment to the moon. This is exactly what happened during the Apollo 15 lunar mission in 1971. Commander David Scott took a hammer and an eagle feather and dropped them onto the lunar regolith. Here's what happened: The feather and the hammer hit the ground at the same time.

Why did it happen? First, it is indeed true that even on the moon there is a greater gravitational force on the hammer than the feather. We can calculate this gravitational force as the product of mass (m in kilograms) and the gravitational field (g in newtons per kilogram). On the surface of the moon, the gravitational field has a value of 1.6 N/kg. If you put this expression in for the net force on a falling object, it looks like this: Fnet = - mg = ma; a = -g. Since both the gravitational force and the acceleration depend on the same mass, it's on both sides of the equation and cancels. That leaves an acceleration of -g. The hammer and the feather fall down with identical motions and hit the ground at the same time.

So, what's different about dropping something on the moon versus on Earth? Yes, there is a different gravitational weight on the moon -- but that's not the issue. It's the lack of air that makes the difference. Remember that Newton's second law is a relationship between the net force and the acceleration. If you drop a feather on the surface of the Earth, there are two forces acting on it. First, there is the downward-pulling gravitational force that is equal to the product of mass and the gravitational field. Second, there is an upward-pushing force due to the interaction with the air, which we often call air drag. This air drag force depends on several things, but the important ones are the object's speed and the size of the object. [...]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Tesla confirmed Monday night that it recently cut the price of the 2020 Model S Long Range Plus by $5,000 and boasted that the EPA-rated range for this version of the Model S -- meaning the number of miles the vehicle can travel per single charge in testing conditions -- has increased to 402 miles. A spokesperson for the Environmental Protection Agency told CNBC in an e-mail on Tuesday: "EPA can confirm that we approved a 402 mile range for the updated Tesla Model S Long Range Plus. Tesla has updated the 2020 Model S Long Range Plus vehicle making several changes to the vehicle from the one EPA previously tested. EPA approved the new label value based on a review of the testing protocols and data submitted by Tesla and found it was complete and accurate. Fueleconomy.gov will be updated in about a week with this information."

In other words, the EPA approved Tesla's right to advertise a 402-mile range rating for the latest version of the Model S Long Range Plus, but the agency has not conducted its own tests of the vehicle. In Tesla's blog post on Monday, the company focused on the ways in which it has improved the range of the Model S Long Range Plus as compared to earlier versions of the company's flagship electric sedan. Among other things, Tesla said it achieved range improvements by reducing the mass of the vehicle by using lighter weight materials in its battery pack and drive units, and other lighter weight components. It also updated its "HOLD" features which allow drivers to remain stopped on a hill without having to keep the brake pedal pressed down. These features maximize regenerative braking in the Model S and other Tesla vehicles that have it. Last month, the EPA rebuffed comments Elon Musk made concerning what he calls an error during the Model S Long Range's testing process, which the executive says cost the car a 400-mile range estimate. The agency said it conducted the testing properly.

"The real Model S range is 400 miles, but when we did the last EPA test, unfortunately, a TA left the car door open and the keys in the car," said Elon Musk at the time. "So the car -- and they did this overnight. And so, the car actually went into a waiting for driver mode and lost 2% of its range. And as a result, it had a 391 test. As soon as the EPA reopens for testing, we will redo the test, and we're actually confident that we will achieve a 400-mile or greater range with the Model S. But to be clear, the Model S, for the past two months -- the true range of the Model S for the past two months has been 400 miles."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Snap announced today (Nov. 29), that it was rolling out a redesign for Snapchat that's intended to separate users' feeds between their friends from the brands that publish content on the app. Founder and CEO Evan Spiegel published an op-ed in Axios this morning about the direction that social media has taken over the last few years, where content from brands and influencers has been given the same weight and placement as content from friends and loved ones in users' feeds. Spiegel also took to YouTube, for the second time in about two years, to explain how the new Snapchat works.

The new structure seems like a positive move. It's sort of solidifying the app, which turned down $3 billion from Facebook in 2013, as the "anti-Facebook." Facebook has muddled the line between content, news about friends, and pure internet garbage to the point where it's become nearly impossible for the average user to know what's important, or even true -- on purpose. Snapchat is reaffirming the value of staying connected to your friends, and enjoying news and entertainment content, but showing that the two activities should not be the same thing. Whether this restructuring will convince more people to start using Snapchat, however, is unclear.

You asked, he answered!

Lithium-ion battery inventor John B. Goodenough has responded to questions submitted by Slashdot readers. Read on for his answers.

wisebabo writes: Salty diet makes you hungry, not thirsty. Science Daily reports: "In a study carried out during a simulated mission to Mars, an international group of scientists has found exactly the opposite to be true. 'Cosmonauts' who ate more salt retained more water, weren't as thirsty, and needed more energy." So if you don't want to gain weight on your trip to Mars, don't eat salty chips. If you don't want to gain weight at home, maybe you should stay away from them as well. From the report: "The studies were carried out by Natalia Rakova (MD, PhD) of the Charite and MDC and her colleagues. The subjects were two groups of 10 male volunteers sealed into a mock spaceship for two simulated flights to Mars. The first group was examined for 105 days; the second over 205 days. They had identical diets except that over periods lasting several weeks, they were given three different levels of salt in their food. The results confirmed that eating more salt led to a higher salt content in urine -- no surprise there. Nor was there any surprise in a correlation between amounts of salt and overall quantity of urine. But the increase wasn't due to more drinking -- in fact, a salty diet caused the subjects to drink less. Salt was triggering a mechanism to conserve water in the kidneys."

You asked, he answered! The creator of Apple's Swift programming language (and a self-described "long-time reader/fan of Slashdot") stopped by on his way to a new job at Tesla just to field questions from Slashdot readers. Read on for Chris's answers...

You asked, he answered!

Ruby on Rails Creator and founder/CTO of Basecamp, David Heinemeier Hansson has responded to questions submitted by Slashdot readers. Read on for his answers.

You asked, he answered!

Perl creator Larry Wall has responded to questions submitted by Slashdot readers. Read on for his answers...

Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an article from Jeffrey Guhin, an assistant professor of sociology at UCLA: Imagine a future society in which everything is perfectly logical. What could go wrong...? Last week, US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson offered up the perfect example of scientism when he proposed the country of Rationalia, in which "all policy shall be based on the weight of evidence". Tyson is a very smart man, but this is not a smart idea. It is even, we might say, unreasonable and without sufficient evidence... employing logic to consider the concept reveals that there could be no such thing...

First, experts usually don't know nearly as much as they think they do. They often get it wrong, thanks to their inherently irrational brains that -- through overconfidence, bubbles of like-minded thinkers, or just wanting to believe their vision of the world can be true -- mislead us and misinterpret information... And second, science has no business telling people how to live. It's striking how easily we forget the evil that following "science" can do. So many times throughout history, humans have thought they were behaving in logical and rational ways, only to realize that such acts have yielded morally heinous policies that were only enacted because reasonable people were swayed by "evidence".