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Submission + - Navy's new laser weapon: Hype or reality? (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: MIT's Subrata Ghoshroy deconstructs the Navy's recent claim of successful testing with the Laser Weapon System. It seems the test videos released to the press in December were nothing more than a dog and pony show with scaled-down expectations so as to appear successful: 'When they couldn’t get a laser lightweight enough to fit on a ship while still being powerful enough to burn through the metal skin of an incoming nuclear missile, they simply changed their goal to something akin to puncturing the side of an Iranian rubber dinghy.' Ghoshroy is an entertaining writer who is an 'old hand' in the laser research industry. He gives a explanation here of the history of laser weapons, and how the search for 'SWAP' continues: 'At the end of the day, good beam quality and good SWAP—size, weight and power—still determine the success or failure of a given laser weapon, and we’re just not anywhere near meeting all those requirements simultaneously.'

Submission + - Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team responds in Nepal (opensource.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since the devastating earthquake in Nepal, there have been responses from all over the world from relief agencies, governments, non-profits, and ordinary citizens. One interesting effort has been from the crowdsourced mapping community, especially on OpenStreetMap.org, a free and open web map of the world that anyone can edit (think the Wikipedia of maps.)

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), an NGO that works to train, coordinate, and organize mapping on OpenStreetMap for humanitarian, disaster response, and economic development, has mobilized volunteers from around the world to help map since the Haiti earthquake in 2010.

Submission + - Are We Entering A "Golden Age Of Quantum Computing Research"? (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Lashdots
Lashdots writes: Last month, an elite team at IBM Research team announced an advance in quantum computing: it had built a four-qubit square lattice of superconducting qubits, roughly one-quarter-inch square, that was capable of detecting and measuring the two types of quantum computing errors (bit-flip and phase-flip). Previously, it was only possible to address one type of quantum error or the other. The next step is to correct quantum errors.

In a blog post, Mark Ritter, who oversees scientists and engineers at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Laboratory, wrote: "I believe we’re entering what will come to be seen as the golden age of quantum computing research." His team, he said, is "on the forefront of efforts to create the first true quantum computer." But what would that mean, and what other big next steps are there?

Submission + - Interactive Map Exposes The World's Most Murderous Places (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Lashdots
Lashdots writes: In 2012, 437,000 people were killed worldwide, yielding a global average murder rate of 6.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. A third of those homicides occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean, home to just 8% of the world's population. But data on violent death can be difficult to obtain, since governments are often reluctant to share their homicide statistics. What data is available is sometimes inconsistent and inconclusive.

To make this data clear and to better address the problem of global homicide, a new open-source visualization tool, the Homicide Monitor, tracks the total number of murders and murder rates per country, broken down by gender, age and, where the data is available, the type of weapon used, including firearms, sharp weapons, blunt weapons, poisoning, and others. For the most violent region in the world, the 40 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, you can also see statistics by state and city. That geographic specificity helps to underscore an important point about murders, says Robert Muggah, the research director and program coordinator for Citizen Security at the Rio de Janeiro-based Igarapé Institute. "In most cities, the vast majority of violence takes place on just a few street corners, at certain times of the day, and among specific people."

Submission + - The Ambitions And Challenges Of Mesh Networks and The Local Internet Movement (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Lashdots
Lashdots writes: Recently, a pair of artists in New York put forward an unusual plan for teaching middle school students about the Internet: specifically, by teaching them how to get off it and build their own. With a private social network and a wireless "darknet," OurNet is part of a growing movement that aims to consider and build alternative digital networks. Using affordable, off-the-shelf hardware and open-source software, communities around the world are assembling small, independent, nonprofit wireless mesh networks... And yet, while the decentralized, ad hoc network architecture appeals philosophically to tech-savvy users fed up with monopolistic ISPs, nobody’s found a way to make mesh networks work easily and efficiently enough to replace many home Internet connections. Meanwhile, in spite of the challenges, hackers and artists have located a broader educational and philosophical element to these projects. Says Dan Phiffer, an artist and programmer: "We kind of realize that none of these systems that we use are inevitable."

Submission + - The World's Most Wasteful Megacity

Submitted by merbs
merbs writes: The world’s most wasteful megacity is a densely populated, steadily aging, consumerist utopia where we buy, and throw away, a staggering amount of stuff. Where some faucet, toilet, or pipe, is constantly leaking in our apartments. Where an armada of commerce-beckoning lights are always on. Where a fleet of gas-guzzling cars still clog the roadways. I, along with my twenty million or so neighbors, help New York City use more energy, suck down more water, and spew out more solid waste than any other mega-metropolitan area.

Submission + - Robots in 2020: Lending A Helping Hand To Humans (And Each Other) (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Lashdots
Lashdots writes: In the next five years, robots won't kill us (or drive our cars). But they will get better at helping us do routine tasks—and at helping each other too. Those are some of the predictions Fast Company gleaned from some of the robotics firms on its "most innovative" list, including Anki Robotics, robot-based genetic testing startup Counsyl, and Lockheed Martin, which has demonstrated a pair of unmanned aerial vehicles that work together to fight fires.
User Journal

Journal Journal: When did Net Neutrality change? 26

Journal by Marxist Hacker 42

As late as last year, I remember Net Neutrality being a libertarian free market concept- preventing a crony corporate takeover of the Internet. Now that it is being implemented by the FCC, it has suddenly become a crony corporate (Democrat Brand) takeover of the Internet, that all good libertarians should oppose.

Submission + - FAA: 2 million lines of code process new air traffic system (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: he Federal Aviation Administration this week said it had completed the momentous replacement of 40-year old main computer systems that control air traffic in the US. Known as En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM), the system is expected to increase air traffic flow, improve automated navigation and strengthen aircraft conflict detection services, with the end result being increased safety and less flight congestion.

Submission + - FBI Slammed On Capitol Hill For 'Stupid' Ideas About Encryption (dailydot.com)

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: At a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, the FBI endured outright hostility as both technical experts and members of Congress from both parties roundly criticized the law enforcement agency's desire to place so-called back doors into encryption technology.

"Creating a technological backdoor just for good guys is technologically stupid," said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a Stanford University computer science graduate. "That's just stupid."

Submission + - New solar telescope capture the images of sun's interior structure

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The high-resolution images, taken by the New Solar Telescope (NST), show the atmosphere above the umbrae(interior structure of umbrae – the dark patches in the center of sunspots) to be finely structured, consisting of hot plasma intermixed with cool plasma jets as wide as 100 kilometers. These ground breaking images being captured by scientists at NJIT’s Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO). Sunspots are formed when strong magnetic fields rise up from the convection zone, a region beneath the photosphere that transfers energy from the interior of the Sun to its surface. At the surface, the magnetic fields concentrate into bundles, which prevent the hot rising plasma from reaching the surface. This energy deficit causes the magnetic bundles to cool down to temperatures about 1,000 degrees lower than their surroundings. The NST takes snapshots of the Sun every 10 seconds, which are then strung together as a video to reveal fast-evolving small explosions, plasma flows and the movement of magnetic fields. Relatively, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory(SDO) captured image of the sun emitting a significant solar flare on January 7th 2014.

Submission + - Oculus Rift-Based System Brings True Immersion to Telepresence Robots

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: University of Pennsylvania researchers have built an Oculus Rift-based telepresence system that attempts to bring true immersion to remotely operated robots. The system, called DORA (Dexterous Observational Roving Automaton), precisely tracks the motion of your head and then duplicates those motions on a mobile robot moving around at a remote location. Video from the robot's cameras is transmitted to the Oculus headset. One of the creators said that while using the system you "feel like you are transported somewhere else in the real world."

Submission + - Apple's Next Frontier Is Your Body (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Lashdots
Lashdots writes: Amid the unveiling of the Apple Watch, Tim Cook's wrist distracted from another new product last month: ResearchKit, an open source iOS platform designed to help researchers design apps for medical studies—and reach millions of potential research subjects through their iPhones. Alongside the company's new frontiers, like the car and the home, Cook told Jim Cramer last month that health "may be the biggest one of all." As Fast Company reports, Cook says Apple's devices could could help pinpoint diseases within decades—and position the company at the center of a "significantly underestimated" mobile-health industry. Given the medical history of Silicon Valley, however, the prognosis for Apple remains unclear.

Submission + - In New AI Benchmark, Computer Takes on Four Top Professional Poker Players

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Stephen Jordan reports at the National Monitor that four of the world’s greatest poker players are going into battle against a computer program that researchers are calling Claudico in the “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence” competition at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. The pros — Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les — will receive appearance fees derived from a prize purse of $100,000 donated by Microsoft Research and by Rivers Casino. Claudico, the first machine program to play heads-up no-limit Texas Hold’em against top human players, will play nearly 20,000 hands with each human poker player over the next two weeks. “Poker is now a benchmark for artificial intelligence research, just as chess once was. It’s a game of exceeding complexity that requires a machine to make decisions based on incomplete and often misleading information, thanks to bluffing, slow play and other decoys,” says Tuomas Sandholm, developer of the program. “And to win, the machine has to out-smart its human opponents.” In total, that will be 1,500 hands played per day until May 8, with just one day off to allow the real-life players to rest.

An earlier version of the software called Tartanian 7 {PDF) was successful in winning the heads-up, no-limit Texas Hold’em category against other computers in July, but Sandholm says that does not necessarily mean it will be able to defeat a human in the complex game. “I think it’s a 50-50 proposition,” says Sandholm. “My strategy will change more so than when playing against human players,” says competitor Doug Polk, widely considered the world’s best player of Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold’em, with total live tournament earnings of more than $3.6 million. “I think there will be less hand reading so to speak, and less mind games. In some ways I think it will be nice as I can focus on playing a more pure game, and not have to worry about if he thinks that I think, etc.”

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