Kitsune - Slashdot User

'Climate Apartheid': UN Expert Says Human Rights May Not Survive (theguardian.com) 364

Posted by msmash on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @02:02PM from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

The world is increasingly at risk of "climate apartheid," where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said. From a report: Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law. Alston is critical of the "patently inadequate" steps taken by the UN itself, countries, NGOs and businesses, saying they are "entirely disproportionate to the urgency and magnitude of the threat." His report to the UN human rights council (HRC) concludes: "Human rights might not survive the coming upheaval."

The report also condemns Donald Trump for "actively silencing" climate science, and criticises the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, for promising to open up the Amazon rainforest to mining. But Alston said there were also some positive developments, including legal cases against states and fossil fuel companies, the activism of Greta Thunberg and the worldwide school strikes, and Extinction Rebellion.

What Does IQ Really Measure? 488

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 25, 2011 @06:53PM from the how-quickly-you-get-angry-when-you-lose-at-chess dept.

sciencehabit writes "Kids who score higher on IQ tests will, on average, go on to do better in conventional measures of success in life: academic achievement, economic success, even greater health, and longevity. Is that because they are more intelligent? Not necessarily. New research concludes that IQ scores are partly a measure of how motivated a child is to do well on the test. And harnessing that motivation might be as important to later success as so-called native intelligence."

Steve Jobs: 'We Don't Track Anyone' 373

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 25, 2011 @05:28PM from the truth-is-in-the-iphone-of-the-beholder dept.

fysdt writes "There has obviously been a lot of discussion about last week's disclosure that iOS devices are maintaining an easily-accessible database tracking the movements of users dating back to the introduction of iOS 4 a year ago. The issue has garnered the attention of US elected officials and has played fairly heavily in the mainstream press. One MacRumors reader emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking for clarification on the issue while hinting about a switch to Android if adequate explanations are not forthcoming. Jobs reportedly responded, turning the tables by claiming both that Apple does not track users and that Android does, while referring to the information about iOS shared in the media as 'false.'" Apple has now been hit with a class-action lawsuit over the location-tracking issue.

Euler's Partition Function Theory Finished 117

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 21, 2011 @05:29PM from the that-was-quick dept.

universegeek writes "Mathematician Ken Ono, from Emory, has solved a 250-year-old problem: how to exactly and explicitly generate partition numbers. Ono and colleagues were able to finally do this by realizing that the pattern of partition numbers is fractal (PDF). This pattern allowed them to find a finite, algebraic formula, which is like striking oil in mathematics."

Play Pacman, Pinball, and Pong With a Paramecium 88

Posted by timothy on Saturday January 15, 2011 @12:08PM from the why-I-don't-bathe dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Science is rarely ever this cool! 'Physicist Ingmar Riedel-Kruse and his team from Stanford University have done just that by creating versions of classic games that you can navigate by physically controlling living organisms. A game called PAC-mecium is Pacman with a twist: players use a console to change the polarity of an electrical field in a fluid chamber filled with paramecia, which makes the organisms move in different directions. A camera sends real-time images to a computer, where they are superimposed onto a game board (see video above). By looking at the screen, a player can guide the paramecia to eat virtual yeast cells and make them avoid Pacman-like fish. A microprocessor tracks the movement of the organisms to keep score.' Also available are versions of Pinball, Pong, and soccer."

Airborne Prions Prove Lethal In Mouse Studies 116

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 14, 2011 @07:29PM from the denny-crane dept.

sgunhouse writes "Wired has a story up on the lethality of airborne prions. It should be noted that prions (which cause 'mad cow disease' and similar disorders) are not normally airborne, and take a long time to kill the infected animal, but so far are 100% lethal if something else doesn't kill the animal first. So, they are not likely to be useful as a biological weapon (my first thought when reading their headline), but they present another safety precaution to consider."

Comment Probably worth modding parent up (Score 1) 939

by Kitsune on Friday October 02, 2009 @05:50PM (#29621655) Attached to: The Most Useless Key On My Keyboard Is...

I'm in agreement with the poster. Even while it's useful one for people to know, it's not a easy command to find though, is it? I've been putting my xmodmap entries into "~/.Xmodmap" in Ubuntu, it seems to reload it fine on restart of X.

Not sure if anyone cares but I've mapped my Tab to Esc and Caps Lock to Tab. Makes vi easier to use, especially on those laptops that have that microscopic escape key in the upper left. Here's my .Xmodmap if anyone wants:

[.Xmodmap]
remove lock = Caps_Lock
keycode 23 = Escape
keycode 66 = Tab
[/.Xmodmap]

Comment Re:Safety ? (Score 2, Interesting) 250

by Kitsune on Wednesday September 17, 2008 @05:18AM (#25036145) Attached to: Breakthrough In Use of Graphene For Ultracapacitors

Genda may not of quite nailed it on the head in writing but does have a point: capacitors have the ability to discharge a huge amount of their stored energy at once. All the people I know that used to fix TVs have stories of being thrown across their rooms by forgetting to bleed the charges on (non-super-cap) capacitors and letting something short. In comparison, batteries and gasoline even seem have a limit on the amount of discharge they provide in any period... though a comparable example for gasoline might be to finely mist the all the gas into a well oxygenated room and throw in a match. Wheee! ;)

That said, as it's so fast to charge, hopefully it'll become a practical tech at some point. It'd be great to just be able to plop my laptop/phone/whatever on the tray for a few seconds then walk away with a fully charged battery.

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