If you only read Slashdot's bad summary of a bad summary of the actual study then this does look frivoulous, however the actual research was more around the cues that Autistic people use to better understand the 'typical' emotional response to a social interaction. They were more likely than the baseline group to find something funny if there was canned laughter. This suggests that the test subjects are relying more on social cues to form their own response than 'neuro-typical' people. Whether you think that is worthwhile research or not is a separate question, of course.

It isn't about trying to make a person swing from one side to the other. It is about normalising a slightly more extreme form of already held views to nudge people a little bit more in the desired direction. This basically allows the individual to be moved toward the desired goal without ever being truly challenged in their views.

The ultimate aim of these campaigns is to hollow out the centre-ground and create internal conflict by pushing people to partisan extremes. In this way a foreign power can permanently weaken an opponent's ability to coordinate itself.

A bit of a shame really. While it was a useless gaming product, it was actually an interesting and useful device for creating body tracking or depth mapping software as these capabilities were wrapped in a pretty straightforward API.

True. I've become so used to (Americans mostly, due to the lack of a distinct sound difference between the two in most US accents) seeing 'then' when it should be 'than' that I do a double take when I see the correct spelling used.

I doubt that more than a few dozen people a day travel specifically between those two places. I really don't see that as economically viable, even if there were fast satellite rail services to Manchester at the Liverpool end and Edinburgh at the Glasgow one. Some of the other ones seem to suffer similar problems (are there really enough people wanting to go between Denver and Pueblo at speed to make that route worthwhile - unless it is to get to NORAD quickly)? I suppose you could have the routes take in some intermediate stops, but then I doubt they would be much quicker than what is already available.

If these are the 'strongest' routes, then Hyperloop is doomed.

Wait, so if they are fake messages then they aren't actually messages so this is a purely theoretical issue, right? I know that "Fake" is the latest buzzword for anything that you think is a bad thing, but these are real messages. They are just spam, and we've had those for decades. Likewise they aren't "Rigged with Malware", they link to a page that contains malware for people to download.

The clickbait-style titles manufactured by editors aren't doing the site any favours as they are just lowering the (already pretty low) quality of posts even further.

Done lots of research into the use of technology in (university-level) education, and the conclusions that you came to are relevant there too. The problem is that the buying, distributing and supporting of laptops or tablets is by far the easy part, so it is the bit that gets done. The hard part is in understanding that, as the device gives students access to all the facts that the teacher would normally regurgitate and allows for advanced things like running simulations, the learning approach needs to change. Laptops and tablets are amazing tools for supporting student-centred problem-based learning (and other pedagogies where the student discovers the 'facts' or explores the concepts and their application). Unfortunately, this requires teachers who understand the pedagogies, technologies and can deal with not being the 'source of knowledge' in the classroom, and students who are able to take control of their own learning and not just expect to be told the things they need for the test. Ultimately, it requires the nature of formal education to be reconsidered (what are we testing? why are we testing it? etc.) It isn't easy, takes lots of time and money and there is little desire to do it.

tl;dr: formal education today is still based on the needs of the industrial revolution, where a certain level of standardised knowledge (and no more!) was desirable for people to be able to work efficiently in factories. The nature of the world now means that people need to be adaptable individuals rather than automatons, and that means shifting the emphasis from teaching to learning and enabling people to develop into resilient individuals with the capacity to apply their prior knowledge to rapidly changing situations.

Sounds like mismarketing to me - the marketing should have told people where it would fit. Having tried it, I was extremely unimpressed, however it was called the 'Explorer Edition' for a reason. Google were hoping that a few people would buy them, work out what they were useful for and then Google could refine them for an actual commercial product. It seems like that may be what has happened.

On a side note, I tried Hololens recently and that has real potential if they can increase the tiny field of view so that you can get augmented peripheral vision.

Hardly a surprise that it is going into service with such outdated, insecure systems. This is the Navy that genuinely put this out as a recruitment video a few years back. Now it might have been a joke from the crewman, but the ad is edited in such a way that it suggests not.

This is from the same company that sell a coconut with a ring-pull (Sorry for the Hate Mail link!). It is probably more about their target demographics and getting some free publicity than anything genuinely practical.

Not quite. It is still showing up in the title on home page for me. It doesn't seem to be on any article pages though.

probably a Linx tablet (http://amzn.eu/7ol5pw3). We got some at work to try out, and for light use they aren't too bad. Not as speedy as a Surface Pro, but much cheaper and definitely capable enough for a bit of web browsing, simple Office use, etc. They have a micro-HDMI port so can easily be hooked up to a TV or monitor when necessary.

Just come back from a visit to the US and wasn't asked anything at immigration in Houston - just completed an onscreen immigration form, fingerprints and photo and then waved through. Don't remember even speaking to anyone, if I did it was just to confirm that I wasn't there on business. Same lack of questioning for the flight home to the UK from JFK.

A few years ago in San Francisco, I had a nice chat about the relative merits of England and the USA in the World Cup that was about to start, and a couple of years later a more standoffish conversation at Chicago about why I was going to Seattle (he seemed not to have heard about Grunge). It has been standard practice for a long time to ask questions to see if people seem legitimate, it's just that when it is done well it comes across as just having a pleasant conversation.

The worst that I can see that being viewed as is plagiarism - and that would depend on whether or not you were trying to pass it off as entirely your own work. This type of activity is happening with increasing frequency in the photography world - photo used for an advert is a third-party reshoot of something that another photographer had posted online. There have been court cases, but because you can't copyright the concept then they have tended to be for things like loss of earnings, plagiarism, etc. Here is an example from a few days ago https://petapixel.com/2017/02/...

He was using the accounts of the USERS of the websites, not the OWNERS. Putting in a backdoor would mean that even when the admin passwords are changed, he would still have access to the data. Also, a backdoor likely also gives a level of plausible deniability to deflect suspicion should a 'hack' ever be spotted internally - "it can't have been me. I never had access to the live server. I just gave you the code to deploy yourself".