Comment Wrong Solution (Score 1) 119
Instead of helping users close their eyes and ears, Twitter needs to help users kick people out of their cocktail parties.
Comment 2 565 2795 (Score 1) 663
To stay under a 2 degree celsius global warming increase, we can pour about 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, fossil fuel companies are already planning on releasing 2795 gigatons from their proven reserves.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
Comment 20-year's worth of underestimation (Score 0) 306
Hopefully the new models are not just continuing a 20-year trend of underestimating the impacts of global warming. Like melting arctic ice.
Comment International Business Times... (Score 1) 108
...is where I go to get the latest space news.
Just kidding. I go to the Bad Astronomer, who posted a color 360 panorama two days ago: http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/08/09/first-color-360-degree-panorama-from-curiosity/
C'mon Slashot, you can do better than this.
Comment Re:Socialism (Score 1) 97
Here's the event link to Fraser's hangout: http://goo.gl/a5t4O
Comment Re:Missing Options (Score 2) 356
Also missing: a folding bike. Very convenient for "multi-modal" transportation. Ride to the train, fold and stow overhead if the train is crowded, unfold and ride to destination. Raining? Into the trunk of a cab.
Comment Re:Treaspassing (Score 1) 376
Your supreme court agrees you have no expectation of privacy on a public road, now shut the hell up and enjoy your "freedom".
My right to privacy does not mean that I have no expectation of accountability - especially in terms of city governance, if the city will not avow of the cameras, then how do I know who to impeach or vote out of office in the next election for misuse of funds?
Mad Parent upward and onward!
Submission + - Worst Design Ever? Plastic Clamshell Packaging 1
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Rebecca Rosen writes that iIf you've recently opened up — or, more specifically, tried to open up — an CFL light bulb, you can sympathize with the question posted on Quora last year, "What is the worst piece of design ever done?" to which the site's users have given resounding support to one answer: plastic clamshell packaging. "Design should help solve problems" — clamshells are supposed to make it harder to steal small products and easier for employees to arrange on display — but this packaging, says Anita Schillhorn, makes new ones, such as time wasted, frustration, and the little nicks and scrapes people incur as they just try to get their damn lightbulb out. The problem is so pervasive there is even a Wikipedia page devoted to "wrap rage," "the common name for heightened levels of anger and frustration resulting from the inability to open hard-to-remove packaging." Amazon and Wal-Mart are prodding more manufacturers to change their packaging to cut waste. “We’ve gotten e-mails from customers who’ve purchased scissors in a clamshell, which would require another pair of scissors to open the package,” says Nadia Shouraboura, Amazon’s vice president of global fulfillment. Other worthy answers to the Quora question include the interfaces on most microwaves, TV remotes, New York City's parking signs, and pull-handles on push-only doors, but none gained even close to the level of popular repudiation that clamshells received."
Submission + - Game Theory, Antivirus Improvements Explain Rise In Mac Malware (forbes.com)
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: Four years ago, security researcher Adam J. O'Donnell used game theory to predict in a paper for IEEE Security and Privacy when malware authors would start targeting Macs. Based on some rough assumptions and a little algebra, he found that it would only become profitable to target Apple's population of users when they reached 16% market share.
So why are we now seeing mass attacks on Macs like the Flashback trojan when Apple only has 11% market share? O'Donnell says It turns out he may have underestimated the effectiveness of the antivirus used by most Windows users, which now makes overconfident Mac users a relatively vulnerable and much more appealing target. Based on current antivirus detection rates, O'Donnell's equations now show that victimizing Macs becomes a profitable alternative to PCs at just 6.5% market share.
So why are we now seeing mass attacks on Macs like the Flashback trojan when Apple only has 11% market share? O'Donnell says It turns out he may have underestimated the effectiveness of the antivirus used by most Windows users, which now makes overconfident Mac users a relatively vulnerable and much more appealing target. Based on current antivirus detection rates, O'Donnell's equations now show that victimizing Macs becomes a profitable alternative to PCs at just 6.5% market share.
Submission + - Artificial DNA replicates and 'evolves' (nature.com)
ananyo writes: Scientists have demonstrated that several lab-made variants of DNA can store and transmit information much like the genuine article.
DNA is made up of nucleic acid bases — labelled A, C, G and T — on a backbone made of phosphates and the sugar deoxyribose. The artificial polymers, dubbed XNAs, carry the normal genetic 'alphabet' on a backbone made using different sugars.
The researchers engineered enzymes that transcribed DNA into the various XNAs, then back into new DNA strands. Faithful genetic transmission over successive DNA-to-XNA cycles allowed researchers to select for only those XNAs that attached to certain target proteins from a pool of random samples — a process akin to evolution over multiple generations (abstract).
The research confirms for the first time that replication, heredity and evolution can take place in artificial DNA-like molecules.
DNA is made up of nucleic acid bases — labelled A, C, G and T — on a backbone made of phosphates and the sugar deoxyribose. The artificial polymers, dubbed XNAs, carry the normal genetic 'alphabet' on a backbone made using different sugars.
The researchers engineered enzymes that transcribed DNA into the various XNAs, then back into new DNA strands. Faithful genetic transmission over successive DNA-to-XNA cycles allowed researchers to select for only those XNAs that attached to certain target proteins from a pool of random samples — a process akin to evolution over multiple generations (abstract).
The research confirms for the first time that replication, heredity and evolution can take place in artificial DNA-like molecules.
Comment Re:Here we go (Score 2) 293
Isn't gasoline derived from all natural ingredients? That means it's good for the environment. We all have to do our part!
Comment In other news... (Score 4, Informative) 1181
'James Hensen has been making predictions about climate change since the 1980s. When people are comparing what is happening now to those predictions, they can see they fail to match up.'
In other news, Hansen's 30-year-old global temperature predictions close to spot-on
Comment It Doesn't Matter (Score 1) 267
Economic growth will be maintained for as long as is possible - it's in Civilization's DNA. Therefore, environmental and human costs will eventually be utterly disregarded, and all existing fossil fuels will be extracted and burned at the market's earliest convenience. Nothing anyone says or does will make the slightest difference.
Comment Dr. John Ioannidis (Score 2) 233
John Ioannidis, a medical statistics researcher on a small island in the Aegean, leads a group that has done significant work in this area. Here is an article in The Atlantic about his work.
From the article: ". . . Ioannidis laid out a detailed mathematical proof that, assuming modest levels of researcher bias, typically imperfect research techniques, and the well-known tendency to focus on exciting rather than highly plausible theories, researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time. Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right."
From the article: ". . . Ioannidis laid out a detailed mathematical proof that, assuming modest levels of researcher bias, typically imperfect research techniques, and the well-known tendency to focus on exciting rather than highly plausible theories, researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time. Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right."
Comment Re:Club of Rome Study 2 (Score 1) 816
"Unlimited economic growth" is utterly impossible. Fundamentally, as Tom Murphy points out here and here,
a) all activity requires energy, and
b) there are fundamental limits to efficiency, guaranteed by the second law of thermodynamics.
Read the article. Both of these facts together mean that continued growth is impossible. Even the most optimistic scenarios lead to absurd conclusions i.e. the energy needed for continued growth exceeds that available to a civilization which operates at the best possible efficiency, and which uses all conceivable resources within a spherical volume expanding outward at the speed of light.
In other words, all possible efficiency combined with all possible resources are not enough. Period. Growth must come to a stop, at some point.
a) all activity requires energy, and
b) there are fundamental limits to efficiency, guaranteed by the second law of thermodynamics.
Read the article. Both of these facts together mean that continued growth is impossible. Even the most optimistic scenarios lead to absurd conclusions i.e. the energy needed for continued growth exceeds that available to a civilization which operates at the best possible efficiency, and which uses all conceivable resources within a spherical volume expanding outward at the speed of light.
In other words, all possible efficiency combined with all possible resources are not enough. Period. Growth must come to a stop, at some point.
