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Math

World Cup Prediction Failures 312

Posted by timothy from the goal-oops-I-mean-nope dept.
pdcull writes "We all read on Slashdot about the investment banks using their massive computer power and clever modeling techniques to predict the FIFA World Cup outcome. Now that Goldman Sachs's, UBS's and Danske Bank's favorite, Brazil, has been eliminated, and with JP Morgan's England long gone, the question that begs to be asked is: can we really trust these guys to predict the financial markets any better than they did World Cup?"
Cellphones

Android vs. iPhone 4 Signal Strength Bars Comparison 253

Posted by timothy from the under-the-hood dept.
thisisauniqueid writes "In light of the clamor over the iPhone 4 Grip of Death, AnandTech recently reverse-engineered the phone's signal-strength-to-bars mapping. Because Android is open source, we can determine the corresponding mapping for Android in combination with the 3GPP spec referenced in the source, allowing the signal-strength-to-bars mapping for both Android and the iPhone 4 to be plotted on the same axes. This shows that the iPhone 4 consistently reports a higher percentage signal strength (as defined by the fraction of bars lit) than Android GSM devices at the same signal strength."
Medicine

Poor Vision? There's an App For That 146

Posted by Soulskill from the i-can-see-clearly-now dept.
necro81 writes "Researchers at MIT's Media Lab have developed a smartphone app that allows users to measure how poor their vision is (myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism) and receive a corrective prescription. The user peers through a $2 optical adapter at the screen of a smartphone. The app displays lighted bars, and prompts the user to adjust the display until the bars line up. Repeating this with bars in different locations and orientations allows the vision distortion to be determined to within about 0.4 diopters using a Nexus One. The iPhone 4, with its higher-resolution display, should be able to improve that to 0.28 diopters. This could have broad application in the developing world, where experienced opticians and diagnostic equipment are hard to come by."
Medicine

Microsoft's Health-y Patent Appetite 85

Posted by Soulskill from the fighting-a-bsod-irl dept.
theodp writes "This week's USPTO patent application disclosures included a trifecta of scary health-related 'inventions' from Microsoft. For starters, Microsoft envisions seeing Kids' Personal Health Records Fed Into Video Games, where they can be used to 'regulate and/or prescribe an individual's behavior while playing electronic games.' Next up is Centralized Healthcare Data Management, which describes how employees' health habits can be 'monitored, tracked or otherwise discovered' so employers can 'incentivize a user for an act or penalize for an omission to act.' Finally, there's Wearing Health on Your Sleeve, which describes a sort of high-tech Scarlet Letter designed to tip off 'doctors, potential dates, etc.' about your unhealthy behavior by converting information — 'number of visits to the gym, workout activities, frequency of workouts, heart rate readings, blood pressure statistics, food consumption, vitamin intake, etc.' — into a visual form so that others can see the data 'on mechanisms such as a mood ring, watch, badge, on a website etc.'"
The Almighty Buck

Obama Awards Nearly $2 Billion For Solar Power 514

Posted by Soulskill from the proactively-cleaning-up-sunlight-spills dept.
crimeandpunishment writes "President Obama says it's time to heat up solar power, and he's willing to spend a big chunk of federal money to do it. Saturday the president announced the government is giving nearly $2 billion to companies that are building new solar plants in Arizona, Colorado, and Indiana. The president says this will create thousands of jobs and increase our use of renewable energy."
Government

UK Gov't Launches 'Your Freedom' Website To Seek Laws Worth Repealing 332

Posted by timothy from the required-plug-in-crashed dept.
Firefalcon writes "The UK Government launched Thursday the 'Your Freedom' website, headed by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, to 'identify laws that should be repealed.' In a recent tweet, Police State UK pointed out an article in the New Statesman which appeals for people to call on the Government to repeal the ill thought-out Digital Economy Act that was rushed through Parliament without sufficient scrutiny. While part of the Act is regarding the digital TV switchover, other sections allow for users to be restricted or disconnected from the Internet at the behest of copyright owners, which goes against the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' that has been in place since the Magna Carta."

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