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Comment Their business model might have an expiration date (Score 1) 53

in the end all those AI companies with their billion dollar valuations are just new ways of showing more adds to customers. what i dont really get is, how this is compatible with the way the economy is shifting: fewer and fewer wealthy individuals make up a higher and higher percentage of spending. ads seem less and less effective then. At some point the best way to increase your revenue will be to send a sales rep to a billionair...

Comment Re:That's not quite it (Score 4, Interesting) 51

Seems you missed the point there.

If the company is big enough, and swings around enough money, you can afford to have others do the time intensive stuff for you. And many on that level will.

A relative of mine owns quite a big precious metals recycling company - and delegates pretty much every tedious aspect of running the show to others. He mostly sits in one of his vaccation homes, has a few personal assistants with him, gets a briefing every day or two and "decides" on important issues. If he spends more than 2 hours a day with actual work I would be really surprised.

And thats how it is for the overwhelming portion of the ultrarich. they dont work hard - they condense their work down to the few moments that are fun.

Submission + - Israeli Firm Tied to Tool That Uses WhatsApp Flaw to Spy on Activists (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An Israeli firm accused of supplying tools for spying on human-rights activists and journalists now faces claims that its technology can use a security hole in WhatsApp, the messaging app used by 1.5 billion people, to break into the digital communications of iPhone and Android phone users. Security researchers said they had found so-called spyware — designed to take advantage of the WhatsApp flaw — that bears the characteristics of technology from the company, the NSO Group.

The spyware was used to break into the phone of a London lawyer who has been involved in lawsuits that accused the company of providing tools to hack the phones of Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi dissident in Canada; a Qatari citizen; and a group of Mexican journalists and activists, the researchers said. There may have been other targets, they said. Digital attackers could use the vulnerability to insert malicious code and steal data from an Android phone or an iPhone simply by placing a WhatsApp call, even if the victim did not pick up the call. As WhatsApp’s engineers examined the vulnerability, they concluded that it was similar to other tools from the NSO Group, because of its digital footprint.

Comment Re:Timeline (Score 1) 390

Oh, and when did Daft Punk join the Federation?

that was pretty much the only character i wanted to learn more about - but WHY does this creature have two identical screens on his face?

the timeline thing seems problematic too - it just looks too "modern" and advanced. you would be hard pressed to tell that this is supposed to happen before TNG and voyager.

also: the plot was so forgettable. i can hardly remember why anyone did what they did when they did it.

Comment Re:Slashdot pessimists (Score 1) 104

i still think the increased production cost of branching movies dont really improve the viewing experience that much. interactivity is so limited and feels detached.

conventional games (provided they are well made) are way more engaging and provide a deeper experience - especially from a educational point of view.

Comment Re: Thank your parrents (Score 1) 594

Non-american here (from Austria). Isn't it a crime to beat your kids in the US, too. Here beating children is a SERIOUS offense - and rightly so. And i'm not seeing us doing so badly on an economic and social level. It's usually a better idea to spur children's will to get better education by making them curious - not afraid...
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."
Medicine

Saving 28,000 Lives a Year 263

Posted by kdawson from the life-support dept.
The New Yorker is running a piece by Atul Gawande that starts by describing the everyday miracles that can be achieved in a modern medical intensive care unit, and ends by making a case for a simple and inexpensive way to save 28,000 lives per year in US ICUs, at a one-time cost of a few million dollars. This medical miracle is the checklist. Gawande details how modern medicine has spiraled into complexity beyond any person's ability to track — and nowhere more so than in the ICU. "A decade ago, Israeli scientists published a study in which engineers observed patient care in ICUs for twenty-four-hour stretches. They found that the average patient required a hundred and seventy-eight individual actions per day, ranging from administering a drug to suctioning the lungs, and every one of them posed risks. Remarkably, the nurses and doctors were observed to make an error in just one per cent of these actions — but that still amounted to an average of two errors a day with every patient. Intensive care succeeds only when we hold the odds of doing harm low enough for the odds of doing good to prevail. This is hard." The article goes on to profile a doctor named Peter Pronovost, who has extensively studied the ability of the simplest of complexity tamers — the checklist — to save lives in the ICU setting. Pronovost oversaw the introduction of checklists in the ICUs in hospitals across Michigan, and the result was a thousand lives saved in a year. That would translate to 28,000 per year if scaled nationwide, and Pronovost estimates the cost of doing that at $3 million.

Comment Microsoft erased Poland entirely from their map (Score 1) 330

by Nuklearwanze (#23892695) Attached to: A Cautionary Tale of Open Source Social Technologies
things like a missing line in a file can happen easily. what i find much more disturbing, is that microsoft had their worldmap (the one, displayed in the time settings) wrong for years. from windows 95 up to (and including) windows xp this map had poland entirely erased! instead of the large country the map showed sea. here's a link to a screenshot of the map in question. http://www.depauw.edu/it/helpdesk/images/DST_screen.jpg
Censorship

UK Teen Cited For Calling Scientology a "Cult" 995

Posted by kdawson from the what-it-is dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A 15-year-old in the UK is facing prosecution for using the word 'cult' to describe the Church of Scientology at an anti-Scientology demonstration in London earlier this month. According to the City of London police at the scene, the teen was violating the Public Order Act, which 'prohibits signs which have representations or words which are threatening, abusive or insulting.' There's a video of the teen receiving the summons from the City of London police at the demonstration (starting about 1 minute in), and now he's asking for advice on how to handle the court case."
Biotech

Sperm Made From Female Bone Marrow, Men Obsolete? 459

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what-some-women-have-been-saying-for-years dept.
Shaitan Apistos writes "British scientists have discovered a way to turn female bone marrow into sperm, allowing women to reproduce without the need of male companionship. All children born of this method would be female, due the lack Y chromosomes, and there is high chance of birth defects. Eggs also can be created from male bone marrow, but men looking to reproduce would still need to find a surrogate mother to handle the gestation period. I'd like to take a moment to welcome our new amazonian overlords and remind them that men are still very good at mowing lawns and fixing cars."
Television

Knight Rider To Ride Again 243

Posted by Zonk from the how-much-can-you-be-disappointed-lets-find-out dept.
Penguinsh*t writes "Though the movie version of Knight Rider has remained 'up on chocks' for the better part of the last decade, Knight Rider, the TV show is revving into high gear. 'The premise of the show will essentially remain the same as the original, which centered on a mulleted man righting wrongs with the help of a particularly chatty and souped-up automobile. No word yet on who will play the hero this time around, but the Peacock is looking for some new blood.' Besides which, 'the Hoff' is busy."

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