Defenestrar writes: The senior review editor of Ars Technica, Lee Hutchinson, examines the potential impact of the Slashdot redesign with regards to the site's relevance.
malachiorion writes: I'm surprised I haven't seen more coverage of Lockheed Martin's autonomous truck convoy demonstration—they sent a group of robotified vehicles through urban and rural environments at Fort Hood, without teleoperation or human intervention. It's an interesting milestone, and sort of a tragic one, since troops could have used robotic vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's fascinating, though, is that Lockheed is hoping to get into Afghanistan just before the U.S. withdraws, to help ferry gear. Plus, they have their sights set on what would be the defense contractor's first real commercial product—kits that turn tractor trailers into autonomous vehicles. Here's my post for Popular Science.
Max Hyre writes: LWN almost went under a number
of years ago because its volunteer editors couldn't afford
to keep it up.
The readers rose up and insisted that they be
allowed to pay for it.
Can we do the same for Classic?
I'm a nerd.
I read.
I'm the one in the museum ignoring the display and reading
the description.
I want text, easily accessible, clearly laid out, and plenty of it.
I'll pay to keep the UI I know and love.
The Beta has none of those characteristics.
The Beta site is repellent, unusable, and unneeded.
I won't use it,
and if ``Classic'' goes away,
I won't visit/.,
and it'll be a pity.
How much do you actually receive in revenue for each user?
I suspect I'll match it to keep the status quo.
Ask us what it's worth to us.
I'd certainly pay $1/month, and would think about $5/month.
I bet that I'm not alone.
Ying Hu writes: Slashdot Beta is not Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/journal/63... What was loved about Slashdot does not appear in the new design — those creating the latter, please fire yourself and go work for a commercial consumer site (which we never read, and never will). OUR site should work without JavaScript, and JavaScript that IS used should to do something actually desired by a reader or commenter, not waste our bandwidth and CPU, and electricity, sending CRAP onto our computers. Improvements/ plugins, http://userstyles.org/styles/9..., won't be enough.
KentuckyFC writes: Black holes form when a large star runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight. Since there is no known force that can stop this collapse, astrophysicists have always assumed that it forms a singularity, a region of space that is infinitely dense. Now cosmologists think quantum gravity might prevent this complete collapse after all. They say that the same force that stops an electron spiralling into a nucleus might also cause the collapsing star to "bounce" at scales of around 10^-14cm. They're calling this new state a "Planck star" and say it's lifetime would match that of the black hole itself as it evaporates. That raises the possibility that the shrinking event horizon would eventually meet the expanding Planck star, which emerges with a sudden blast of gamma rays. That radiation would allow any information trapped in the black hole to escape, solving the infamous information paradox. If they're right, these gamma rays may already have been detected by space-based telescopes meaning that the evidence is already there for any enterprising astronomer to tease apart.
kalman5 writes: Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the first amputee in the world to feel sensory rich information — in real-time — with a prosthetic hand wired to nerves in his upper arm. Sørensen could grasp objects intuitively and identify what he was touching while blindfolded. More (french) on: http://actu.epfl.ch/news/une-p...
