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Submission + - Help for 11 year old that wants to grow up to make games? 3

Submitted by Mr. Jones on Friday December 19, 2014 @06:32AM

Mr. Jones writes: Looking for some help... My son who is 11 years old is fascinated by games and mostly game mechanics. He has been playing everything from Magic to WarFrame since he was 5 years old. He seems mostly interested in creating the lore and associated mechanics of the games (Architecture) verses the actual programming. If it was only programming I could help him, but I am lost when it comes to helping him learn more formal ways of developing and defining game play. I really see a talent for this in him and I want to support it anyway I can. So any help with identifying conferences, programs, books, websites, etc, would be appreciated.

Submission + - Astronomers find star-inside-star 40 years after first theorized (vice.com)

Submitted by derekmead on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @01:59PM

derekmead writes: After 40 years, astronomers have likely found a rather strange celestial body known as a Thorne–ytkow object (TZO), in which a neutron star is absorbed by a red supergiant. Originally predicted in the 1970s, the first non-theoretical TZO was found earlier this year, based on calculations presented in apaper forthcoming in MNRAS .

TZOs were predicted by astronomer Kip Thorne and Anna ytkow, who wasthen postdoctoral fellow at CalTech. The pair imagined what might happen if a neutron star in a binary system merged with its partner red supergiant.

This wouldn’t be like two average stars merging. Neutron stars are the ancient remnants of stars that grew too big and exploded. Their cores remain small—about 12.5 miles—as they shed material out into space. Red supergiants are the largest stars in the galaxy with radii up to 800 times that of our sun, but they aren’t dense.

Submission + - Ethical trap: robot paralysed by choice of who to save (newscientist.com) 1

Submitted by wabrandsma on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @12:16PM

wabrandsma writes: From New Scientist:

Can a robot learn right from wrong? Attempts to imbue robots, self-driving cars and military machines with a sense of ethics reveal just how hard this is

In an experiment, Alan Winfield and his colleagues programmed a robot to prevent other automatons – acting as proxies for humans – from falling into a hole. This is a simplified version of Isaac Asimov's fictional First Law of Robotics – a robot must not allow a human being to come to harm.

At first, the robot was successful in its task. As a human proxy moved towards the hole, the robot rushed in to push it out of the path of danger. But when the team added a second human proxy rolling toward the hole at the same time, the robot was forced to choose. Sometimes, it managed to save one human while letting the other perish; a few times it even managed to save both. But in 14 out of 33 trials, the robot wasted so much time fretting over its decision that both humans fell into the hole.

Winfield describes his robot as an "ethical zombie" that has no choice but to behave as it does. Though it may save others according to a programmed code of conduct, it doesn't understand the reasoning behind its actions. Winfield admits he once thought it was not possible for a robot to make ethical choices for itself. Today, he says, "my answer is: I have no idea".

As robots integrate further into our everyday lives, this question will need to be answered. A self-driving car, for example, may one day have to weigh the safety of its passengers against the risk of harming other motorists or pedestrians. It may be very difficult to program robots with rules for such encounters.

Submission + - Browser to Facilitate Text Browsing in Emergencies

Submitted by Rambo Tribble on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @09:20AM

Rambo Tribble writes: Programmers at Fast Company are developing the Cosmos browser to allow text browsing from Android phones when networks are buckling under the load of local disasters. A common phenomenon when disaster strikes is the overloading of cell and data networks by massively increased traffic. The Cosmos browser is intended to facilitate using SMS text messages, which often still get through in such circumstances. To quote one developer, "We want this to be a way for people to get information when they're in dire need of it." Sort of a Lynx comes to Android affair. The Smithsonian contemplates the possibilities, here.

Submission + - Final Mars One Numbers are In. Over 200,000 People Have Applied. (spaceindustrynews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 09, 2013 @11:19AM

An anonymous reader writes: The first round of the Mars One Astronaut Selection Program has now closed for applications. In the 5 month application period, Mars One received interest from 202,586 people from around the world, wanting to be amongst the first human settlers on Mars.

Submission + - Chess Games Translated to Music (jonathanwstokes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @08:14PM

An anonymous reader writes: This blogger used algebra to map famous chess games onto a piano, and then outputted the results as MP3s. The results are surprisingly listenable.

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