Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - Autobraking tech will be standard in cars by 2022 (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by pgmrdlm
pgmrdlm writes: Autobraking tech will be standard in cars by 2022, but drivers complain of "phantom braking"
Automatic emergency braking will be standard in most cars in 2022. The technology is expected to cut the number of rear-end crashes in half, but hundreds of drivers say sometimes the system slams on the brakes – apparently for no reason. CBS News found reports of several accidents and injuries that drivers blamed on false activations of emergency automatic braking systems. Safety advocates and carmakers say in the vast majority of cases it works, but it is not perfect.

For Cindy Walsh, getting behind the wheel of her 2018 Nissan Rogue raises her anxiety level. Since she bought the SUV new last October, she told CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave it has slammed on the brakes three times for no clear reason when she said there was no risk of a collision.

"The first one, I was driving down a four-lane highway going about 55 and it completely came to a complete stop," Walsh said. Now she said she's scared to drive the car, so she doesn't drive it.

Walsh took it to the dealer each time. Twice, she said, they told her they fixed it.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now investigating the 2017 and 2018 Rogue after learning of nearly 850 complaints of false activation of the SUV's automatic braking system. That includes reports of 14 crashes and five injuries.
China

Scientists Are Making Human-Monkey Hybrids in China (technologyreview.com) 210

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
glowend shares a report: In a controversial first, a team of researchers have been creating embryos that are part human and part monkey, reports the Spanish daily El Pais. According to the newspaper, the Spanish-born biologist Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who operates a lab at the Salk Institute in California, has been working with monkey researchers in China to perform the disturbing research. Their objective is to create "human-animal chimeras," in this case monkey embryos to which human cells are added. The idea behind the research is to fashion animals that possess organs, like a kidney or liver, made up entirely of human cells. Such animals could be used as sources of organs for transplantation. The technique for making chimeras involves injecting human embryonic stem cells into a days-old embryo of another species. The hope is that the human cells will grow along with the embryo, adding to it. Izpisua Belmonte tried making human-animal chimeras previously by adding human cells to pig embryos, but the human cells didn't take hold effectively. Because monkeys are genetically closer to humans, it's possible that the new experiments could now succeed. To give the human cells a better chance of taking hold, scientists also use gene-editing technology to disable the formation of certain types of cells in the animal embryos.
AI

The Police in UK Want AI To Stop Violent Crime Before it Happens (newscientist.com) 170

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Police in the UK want to predict serious violent crime using artificial intelligence, New Scientist is reporting. The idea is that individuals flagged by the system will be offered interventions, such as counseling, to avert potential criminal behavior. From the report: However, one of the world's leading data science institutes has expressed serious concerns about the project after seeing a redacted version of the proposals. The system, called the National Data Analytics Solution (NDAS), uses a combination of AI and statistics to try to assess the risk of someone committing or becoming a victim of gun or knife crime, as well as the likelihood of someone falling victim to modern slavery. West Midlands Police is leading the project and has until the end of March 2019 to produce a prototype. Eight other police forces, including London's Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police, are also involved. NDAS is being designed so that every police force in the UK could eventually use it. Police funding has been cut significantly over recent years, so forces need a system that can look at all individuals already known to officers, with the aim of prioritizing those who need interventions most urgently, says Iain Donnelly, the police lead on the project.
Censorship

The New Censorship: 'How Did Google Become The Internet's Censor and Master Manipulator?' (usnews.com) 246

Posted by BeauHD from the master-of-disguise dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Robert Epstein from U.S. News and World Report writes an article describing how Google has become the internet's censor and master manipulator. He writes about the company's nine different blacklists that impact our lives: autocomplete blacklist, Google Maps blacklist, YouTube blacklist, Google account blacklist, Google News blacklist, Google AdWords blacklist, Google AdSense blacklist, search engine blacklist, and quarantine list. The autocomplete blacklist filters out select phrases like profanities and other controversial terms like "torrent," "bisexual" and "penis." It can also be used to protect or discredit political candidates. For example, at the moment autocomplete shows you "Ted" (for former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz) when you type "lying," but it will not show you "Hillary" when you type "crooked." While Google Maps photographs your home for everyone to see, Google maintains a list of properties it either blacks out or blurs out in its images depending on the property, e.g. military installations or wealthy residences. Epstein makes the case that while YouTube allows users to flag videos, Google employees seem far more apt to ban politically conservative videos than liberal ones. As for the Google account blacklist, you may lose access to a number of Google's products, which are all bundled into one account as of a couple of years ago, if you violate Google's terms of service agreement because Google reserves the right to "stop providing Services to you ... at any time." Google is the largest news aggregator in the world via Google News. Epstein writes, "Selective blacklisting of news sources is a powerful way of promoting a political, religious or moral agenda, with no one the wiser." Google can easily put a business out of business if a Google executive decides your business or industry doesn't meet its moral standards and revokes a business' access to Google AdWords, which makes up 70 percent of Google's $80 billion in annual revenue. Recently, Google blacklisted an entire industry -- companies providing high-interest "payday" loans. If your website has been approved by AdWords, Google's search engine is what ultimately determines the success of your business as its algorithms can be tweaked and search rankings can be manipulated, which may ruin businesses. Epstein makes an interesting case for how Google has become the internet's censor and master manipulator. Given Google's online dominance, do you think Google should be regulated like a public utility?
Earth

Volcano Erupts In Southwest Alaska, Sending Ash 20,000 Feet (google.com) 76

Posted by timothy from the why-can't-it-just-salivate? dept.
USA Today reports that according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Pavlov Volcano, "about 600 miles southwest of Anchorage, erupted at 4:18 p.m. local time. The agency says the eruption also led to tremors on the ground. ... The USGS has raised the volcano alert level to "Warning" and the aviation warning to 'Red.'" Television station KTUU of Anchorage has a few photos of the emerging ash plume, which has so far risen to about 20,000 feet (hence that aviation warning).
Earth

We Had All Better Hope These Scientists Are Wrong About the Planet's Future (washingtonpost.com) 618

Posted by msmash from the worried-about-future dept.
Less than 24 hours since we read this dire climate study, an anonymous reader writes from a Washington Post report about several more concerning things: James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, says his new study suggests the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned. The research invokes collapsing ice sheets, violent megastorms and even the hurling of boulders by giant waves in its quest to suggest that even 2 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial levels would be far too much. Hansen has called it the most important work he has ever done. "I think almost everybody who is really familiar with both paleo and modern is now very concerned that we are approaching, if we have not passed, the points at which we have locked in really big changes for young people and future generations," Hansen said.
Businesses

Activision Buys Candy Crush Developer For $5.9B (inquisitr.com) 132

Posted by Soulskill from the no-bubbles-here-no-sir dept.
ForgedArtificer writes: Activision Blizzard purchased Candy Crush Saga developer King Interactive Entertainment last night for a cool $5.9 billion USD; about 20% above market value. The move likely leaves them owning five of the top grossing franchises in the industry. "Candy Crush is one of the most lucrative games in the world, earning some $1.33 billion in revenue in 2014 alone according to a King financial statement. The studio, which operates Candy Crush and a number of similar games including Bubble Witch and Farm Heroes, grossed $529 million in the second quarter of 2015."
Transportation

MH370: Fragment Is From Missing Flight 272

Posted by samzenpus from the crash-landing dept.
hcs_$reboot writes: The plane part (the flaperon) that was found on a beach in the Indian Ocean on Réunion island was determined to be part of MH370, the Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished more than a year ago. Some experts have postulated that the damage suggests the flaperon may have been deployed when the plane hit the water, meaning that someone in the cockpit was consciously manipulating the controls. The Malaysian Prime Minister said at a press conference "We now have physical evidence that ... Flight MH370 tragically ended in the Southern Indian Ocean.".
The Courts

Supreme Court Upholds Key Obamacare Subsidies 591

Posted by Soulskill from the not-that-we'll-stop-arguing-about-it dept.
HughPickens.com writes: Retuers reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6 — 3 in favor of the nationwide availability of tax subsidies that are crucial to the implementation of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, handing a major victory to the president. It marked the second time in three years that the high court ruled against a major challenge to the law brought by conservatives seeking to gut it.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion (PDF). He added that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid." The ruling will come as a major relief to Obama as he seeks to ensure that his legacy legislative achievement is implemented effectively and survives political and legal attacks before he leaves office in early 2017. Justice Antonin Scalia took the relatively rare step of reading a summary of his dissenting opinion from the bench. "We really should start calling the law SCOTUScare," said Scalia referencing the court's earlier decision upholding the constitutionality of the law.
Networking

Microwave Comms Betwen Population Centers Could Be Key To Easing Internet Bottlenecks 221

Posted by timothy from the you'll-get-cancer-and-be-well-done dept.
itwbennett writes: Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Duke University recently looked at the main causes of Internet latency and what it would take to achieve speed-of-light performance. The first part of the paper, titled Towards a Speed of Light Internet, is devoted to finding out where the slowdowns are coming from. They found that the bulk of the delay comes from the latency of the underlying infrastructure, which works in a multiplicative way by affecting each step in the request. The second part of the paper proposes what turns out to be a relatively cheap and potentially doable solution to bring Internet speeds close to the speed of light for the vast majority of us. The authors propose creating a network that would connect major population centers using microwave networks.
IBM

IBM Will Share Tech With China To Help Build IT Industry There 108

Posted by Soulskill from the different-tack-from-Google dept.
An anonymous reader sends this report from Reuters: IBM Corp will share technology with Chinese firms and will actively help build China's industry, CEO Virginia Rometty said in Beijing as she set out a strategy for one of the foreign firms hardest hit by China's shifting technology policies. IBM must help China build its IT industry rather than viewing the country solely as a sales destination or manufacturing base, Rometty said. ... [Her] remarks were among the clearest acknowledgements to date by a high-ranking foreign technology executive that companies must adopt a different tack if they are to continue in China amid growing political pressure. A number of U.S. technology companies operating in China are forming alliances with domestic operators, hoping a local partner will make it easier to operate in the increasingly tough environment for foreign businesses.
Crime

LAPD Police Claim Helicopters Stop Crimes Before They Happen 160

Posted by samzenpus from the bear-in-the-air dept.
HughPickens.com writes True Angelenos don't even bother to look up when one of the LAPD's 17 helicopters rattles their windows searching for a car-jacked Camry or an assault suspect hiding under a jacaranda but few doubt that more bad guys would get away without the nation's largest police helicopter fleet to help chase them. Now the LA Times reports that data shows that LA's helicopters are stopping crimes before they happen. Tapping into the data-driven policing trend, the department uses heat maps, technology and years of statistics to identify crime "hot spots." Pilots then use their downtime to fly over them, on the theory that would-be criminals tend to rethink their nefarious plans when there's "ghetto birds," as Ice Cube calls them, hovering overhead [explanatory video with annoying sound]. Months of data show that the number of serious crimes reported in the LAPD's Newton Division in South L.A. fell during weeks when the helicopters conducted more flights. During the week of Sept. 13, when the helicopter unit flew over Newton 65 times, the division recorded 90 crimes. A week later, the number of flights dropped to 40 and the number of reported crimes skyrocketed to 136, with rises seen among almost all types of crime, including burglary, car theft and thefts from vehicles. "It's extremely cutting edge," says Capt. Gary Walters, who heads the LAPD's air support unit. "It's different. It's nothing that we've ever done before with this specificity."

But Professor Geoffrey Alpert. a policing expert who has studied the use of police helicopters in Miami and Baltimore, says the choppers can deter crime in the short-term but criminals will likely return when they're not around (PDF). "You are deterring the criminals but you aren't getting rid of them and their intent. Those criminals could strike in a different time and place," says Alpert. "I mean that's the whole thing about random patrol. You see a police car and it's the same thing. You hide, he goes around the block and you go back to your breaking and entering."
Transportation

Major Security Vulnerabilities Uncovered At Frankfurt Airport 91

Posted by samzenpus from the how-many-fluid-ounces-is-that? dept.
jones_supa writes "According to a report published in this Sunday's edition of the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper, investigators sent by the European Commission found it surprisingly easy to smuggle banned items past security at Frankfurt Airport. It said undercover investigators posing as passengers were able to smuggle weapons or other dangerous items through security every second time they tried to do so. One of the biggest problems was improperly trained staff, who were often not able to recognize dangerous items when viewing the screens they use to look at x-ray images of baggage. The staff is sourced via a privately owned service provider. Germany's Federal Police said they introduced new measures immediately after learning of the security deficits to ensure that passenger safety was guaranteed. Fraport AG, the company that operates the Germany's biggest airport, also took the findings seriously and begun an operation to retrain a total of 2,500 workers."

Comment Re:For the love of god... (Score 2) 144

"routinely sexually harassed in those classes" - this is a stupid, misandrist, and spurious argument.

- You have no data backing up the "routinely" part aside from your own certain conviction that all men are evil
- You have made absolutely ZERO effort to establish causality even if we assume for a second that you can find such data. Counterproof: women are a LOT more routinely sexually harrassed in politics (Bill Clinton anyone? One count of rape, one count of open-and-shut sexual harrassment. Or hell, look at how prevalent sexual assault was at OWS). Yet women go into politics. In droves.
    Or, let's take another example: entertainment industry. The epitome of sexual harrassment (look up "casting couch" term). I'm finding it hard to observe a shortage of women. SO... what would make STEM so goddamned special that a couple of instances of nerds not knowing how to express romantic interest drives 100% of women out?
- You have ALSO completely discounted that if the male sexual harrassment was the reason, then all-woman colleges would stamp out female STEM majors like hotcakes. in tens of thousands. NEW female-only colleges for STEM would be opening daily. Women-friendly startups started by women would TROUNCE women-hostile ones because the creme-de-la-creme of women STEMs would join them. NONE of that happens, because the problem isn't sexual harrassment.

Slashdot Top Deals

The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.

Close