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Software

Submission + - Reprogrammable Chips That Can Be Updated Like S/W (popsci.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The rapid pace of innovation and the relentless pressure of Moore’s Law means new and better gadgets are always coming to market, but it also means whatever you just bought for several hundred (or thousand) dollars will likely be obsolete in a matter of months (see: the iPhone through the iPhone 4). But a new kind of shape-shifting chip--if it can be tamed and perfected--could change all that, allowing device hardware to be reconfigured when updated designs become available

Comment A few ideas. (Score 1) 111

by Zandamesh (#35830482) Attached to: Crowdsourcing the Censors: A Contest

I like your idea of crowd-sourcing, and I came up with a few ideas while reading yours:

Test the judgement of the moderators.

When mods are called upon to moderate something make sure that they have no way of knowing if it's real or not. This way you can for example request of a mod if "MR. LANGAN IS A BUTT BRAIN," or any other previously non bogus post should be modded or not. This way, you can know before hand if the content should be modded and test the modding ability of the moderator.

Describe what how they should judge something.

When reporting bad content you can usually choose what kind of bad content it is, for example you could choose between:
copyright infringement
offensive
Advertising
(more things here)

It is important to have a distinction between the kinds of bad content because it allows you to both judge the users who mod and the judges. It could be possible that one user/mod can see the distinction between "offensive" and "non-offensive" content but not the difference between "copyright infringing" and "non-copyright infringing" posts. By having this system in place, you could judge each users/mods credibility.

This system allows you to have an overview of how credible each users complaint is and by also keeping track of how each moderators mods things, you could also select the right one for the job. This complements the first adjustment I mentioned and vice versa.

Don't just randomly select moderators

I'm pretty sure Facebook and YouTube keep track of a whole lot of things about their users. When things get reported you could try to search for unbiased mods based on all the data they collect. For example, one post could reported 100 times from one particular geographical location, you could then search for the mods from another location.

These are just the ideas I got off the top off my hat, maybe they'll be useful.

Submission + - 3x efficient petrol engine with no pistons (msn.com) 2

Submitted by
erfnet
erfnet writes: "A cool new high-efficienty petrol engine is trying to come to market with no radiator, no pistons, no valves, no transmission, and no fluids (except for the fuel). At first glance it has a few similarities with the Wonkel engine, but is more advanced. The engine is only suited for hybrid-electric vehicles, but that's ok for the efficiency they are claiming: over 3x versus today's engines. Now in development, they want to come to market in the next two/three years."

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