Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:"aircraft cabins are peculiar places for humans (Score 1) 264

not 2000 lbs, averaging 4000 lbs (as of 2010).

Ah yes, I forgot to calculate our overt addiction with buying never-go-offroad vehicles large enough to be considered military battlefield transport. I stand corrected.

Moist modern sedans weigh this easy, don't even need to go to pickups or suvs (which weight closer to 6-8k). Camaro weight (it's a 2 door) is 3800 lbs. ABS, Airbags all take up weight.

Even a Prius curb weight is 3k
A Smart Car weighs in at 1800 lbs.

Moist sedans? :D

Submission + - AI can detect sexual orientation based on person's photo (cnbc.com)

ugen writes: Artificial Intelligence (AI) can now accurately identify a person's sexual orientation by analyzing photos of their face, according to new research.

The Stanford University study, which is set to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and was first reported in The Economist, found that machines had a far superior "gaydar" when compared to humans.

The machine intelligence tested in the research could correctly infer between gay and straight men 81 percent of the time, and 74 percent of the time for women.

When the AI reviewed five images of a person's face, rather than one, the results were even more convincing – 91 percent of the time with men and 83 percent of the time with women.

Submission + - From Google to Yahoo, Tech Grapples With White Male Discontent (bloomberg.com)

joshtops writes: Google isn’t the only Silicon Valley employer being accused of hostility to white men. Yahoo! Inc. and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. were already fighting discrimination lawsuits brought by white men before Google engineer James Damore ignited a firestorm — and got himself fired — with an internal memo criticizing the company’s diversity efforts and claiming women are biologically less suited than men to be engineers. The Yahoo case began last year when two men sued, claiming they’d been unfairly fired after managers allegedly manipulated performance evaluations to favor women. They claim Marissa Mayer approved the review process and was involved in their terminations, and last month a judge ordered the former chief executive be deposed. TCS, meanwhile, is fighting three men who claim the Mumbai-based firm discriminates against non-Indians at its U.S. offices. A growing backlash against diversity advocates has gained momentum with the election of Donald Trump and his embrace of right-wing media figures including Steve Bannon, who ran Breitbart News until joining Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump has ordered a review of affirmative action policies in higher education, proposed banning transgender people in the military and advocated curbing immigration of non-English speakers to the delight of conservatives who say they’ve been muzzled by liberals.

Comment Re:Umm (Score 5, Interesting) 402

Protip: if your "truth" winds up offending lots of people, there's a good chance it's actually just your own shitty opinion. And, y'know, it's fine to have shitty opinions, it's even often fine to spout your shitty opinion out loud, it's just not a good idea to delude yourself into thinking that shitty opinion is "truth".

Furthermore, if you then feel the need to call people who object to your shitty opinion "snowflakes", there's a good chance that you're actually as sensitive, if not more so, than the people who are telling you where to stick your shitty opinion.

Was this true when a minority spoke out about slavery, or segregation, etc?

Books

Interviews: Ask American Author and Entrepreneur Seth Godin a Question 67

Seth Godin is an American author, entrepreneur, marketer, and public speaker. He is just about as nerdy as it gets, receiving degrees in computer science and philosophy from Tufts University, followed by an MBA in marketing from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In the 80s, he worked as a brand manager for the non-curriculum based educational software company, Spinnaker Software, and then left to found his book packaging business, Seth Godin Productions. Soon after that he launched his marketing company Yoyodyne with Mark Hurst in 1995. Between now and then, Godin has written 17 books, such as Tribes and Linchpin, Free Prize Inside, Purple Cow, and The Dip.

You may ask Godin as many questions as you'd like (one question per comment, please). We'll pick the very best questions and forward them to Seth Godin himself. Feel free to leave your suggestions for who Slashdot should interview next.

Go on, don't be shy!
Botnet

This Unusual Botnet Targets Scientists, Engineers, and Academics (zdnet.com) 67

schwit1 quotes a report from ZDNet: A botnet and cyberattack campaign is infecting victims across the globe and appears to be tracking the actions of specially selected targets in sectors ranging from government to engineering. Researchers from Forcepoint Security Labs have warned that the campaign it has dubbed 'Jaku' -- after a planet in the Star Wars universe because of references to the sci-fi saga in the malware code -- is different to and more sophisticated than many botnet campaigns. Rather than indiscriminately infecting victims, this campaign is capable of performing "a separate, highly targeted operation" used to monitor members of international non-governmental organizations, engineering companies, academics, scientists and government employees, the researchers said. The findings are set out in Forcepoint's report on Jaku, which outlines how of the estimated 19,000 unique victims, 42 percent are in South Korea and a further 31 percent in Japan. Both are countries and neighbors of North Korea. A further nine percent of Jaku victims are in China, six percent in the US, with the remainder spread across 130 other countries.
Yahoo!

Hackers Exploit Adobe Flash Vulnerability In Yahoo Ads 77

vivaoporto notes a report that a group of hackers have used online ad networks to distribute malware over several of Yahoo's websites. The attack began on Tuesday, July 28, and was shut down on Monday, August 3. It was targeted at Yahoo's sports, finance, gaming, and news-related sites. Security firm Malwarebytes says the hackers exploited a Flash vulnerability to redirect users to the Angler Exploit Kit. "Attacks on advertising networks have been on the rise ... researchers say. Hackers are able to use the advertising networks themselves, built for targeting specific demographics of Internet users, to find vulnerable machines. While Yahoo acknowledged the attack, the company said that it was not nearly as big as Malwarebytes had portrayed it to be."

Slashdot Top Deals

HOST SYSTEM RESPONDING, PROBABLY UP...

Working...